At least 24 people, including eight children, died as a result of the disasters caused by the heavy rains that have been recorded since Friday in the state of São Paulo, the most populous in Brazil, authorities reported Monday.
Heavy rains caused landslides, floods and sinkholes on several roads in Brazil’s most populous state, with 46 million inhabitants.
The secretary of Regional Development of the São Paulo state government, Marco Vinholi, told the press on Monday that the death toll rose to 24 and that eight of the victims are children, including a 1-year-old baby.
Several streams and rivers overflowed in at least 11 municipalities of Greater São Paulo, the most populous metropolitan region in South America with 20 million inhabitants.
I want to express my solidarity with the families who lost their loved ones during the chuvas that reached the great São Paulo in the interior of the State. The moment is the union of efforts and great attention. pic.twitter.com/IZNCYD2Mu3
— Geraldo Alckmin (@geraldoalckmin) January 30, 2022
In Várzea Paulista, in the interior of the state, five people from the same family were crushed to death by an avalanche from a hill while they slept, including three children.
The deaths were recorded in the municipalities of Francisco Morato, Franco da Rocha, Várzea Paulista, Arujá, Embú das Artes and in the city of Ribeirao Preto.
Some 640 families were evacuated from their homes.
In Franco da Rocha, Greater São Paulo, the city was under water after the Juquery River and the Ribeirao Eusébio stream overflowed, according to what Governor Doria informed the press.
For its part, the AFP agency reported that dozens of firefighters and volunteers continued to search today for survivors of the avalanche in Franco Da Rocha, 40 kilometers from São Paulo.
“Thirteen people have already been extracted. Unfortunately, only five are alive. We will continue with operations until all possible victims are removed,” firefighters Colonel Alessandro da Silva told AFP.
“Most of the deadly landslides in Brazil occur in precariously built housing areas built on the slopes of hills, such as those in Franco da Rocha,” da Silva explained.
Meanwhile, Julio Bezerra, a 57-year-old resident of the Parque Paulista neighborhood, where the disaster occurred, told AFP: “Near my neighbor’s house, in a ravine, behind a wall, there are three bodies. We can see a father and son intertwined. We’ll have to break down the wall to get them out of there.”
He added: “The firefighters do not trust that there are people alive there. God wants them to be alive. Yesterday someone was asking for help, today his voice is no longer heard. They are trying to get his body out, with or without life.”
The governor of São Paulo, Joao Doria, allocated 15 million reais (about 2.8 million dollars) to help the ten hardest-hit towns in the state.
“More than 1,500 families were displaced by the emergency,” the government reported.
Since the start of the rainy season in October, Brazil has suffered heavy rainfall, especially in the states of Bahia (northeast), where 24 people died, and Minas Gerais (southeast), where there were at least 19 fatalities and thousands of displaced people. , they detailed.
According to specialists, these torrential rains are due, among other things, to the La Niña weather phenomenon, a cooling in the Pacific Ocean that causes more rain than usual in certain regions of the planet and terrible droughts in others, they told the agency.
