The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, visited on Monday the areas affected by torrential rains in the northeast of the country, where at least 91 people died and the search for 26 disappeared continues.
“We flew over part of the affected area, we tried to land but on the recommendation of the pilots we decided not to do so, given the inconsistency of the ground,” Bolsonaro said at a press conference with a delegation of ministers in Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco (northeast).
At least 91 people died due to landslides, the collapse of houses or the furious currents of water and mud that devastated everything in its path in Recife and a dozen municipalities, including Olinda, according to the latest official balance.
Rescuers were searching for “26 missing persons,” the Pernambuco government said.
“Unfortunately these catastrophes happen, a continental country (like Brazil) has its problems,” Bolsonaro said, recalling the recent period of heavy rains that left hundreds dead in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Minas Gerais.
“We are sad, we express our regret to the families, the objective is to comfort them and serve the population,” added the president.
The federal government announced an allocation of 1,000 million reais (about USD 210 million) to assist the local government and municipalities with the humanitarian response, the reestablishment of basic services and, later, the reconstruction of houses.
The rains began last Tuesday, but intensified over the weekend.
Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the volume of rains reached 70% of what was expected for the entire month of May in some parts of the capital of Pernambuco.
– “A tsunami” –
On Monday morning, firefighters continued to search for missing persons in the community of Jardim Monteverde, a steep area with precarious houses located on the border between Recife and the municipality of Jaboatao dos Guararapes, where a landslide buried entire houses and caused the death of about twenty people.
Five were cousins of Edinaldo Marques.
“Relatives called me to tell me that one of the (containment) barriers had fallen on my cousins’ house. (…) We are heartbroken, desperate,” Marques told AFP.
Mario Guadalupe has lived there for 40 years and says he has never seen “so much rain in such a short time.”
“There was a first landslide. We thought that it would not fall much more, but immediately a new torrent came that was like a tsunami, it dragged everything in its path,” this dark-skinned neighbor with a graying mustache told AFP, whose house was saved by little bit.
“I turned it into a help and food distribution point for the evicted,” said Guadalupe, moved by the loss of several relatives.
The ravages left some 5,000 people homeless or displaced and extensive damage to the infrastructure of several municipalities.
– Forecast of new rains –
“There is a forecast of rain for the next few days, the population must follow the self-protection measures and the Civil Defense alerts,” Regional Development Minister Daniel Ferreira warned on Monday.
The Natural Disaster Monitoring Center (Cemaden) estimates a “very high” possibility of “floods and floods” occurring in the Recife metropolitan region this Monday due to the accumulation of rain in recent days and the forecast of new precipitation.
The images of this weekend evoke the drama that occurred in February in Petrópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (southeast), where 233 people died due to torrential rains and landslides.
According to experts, tragedies of this type are due, in addition to heavy rains, to the topography and the existence of large neighborhoods with precarious housing in Brazil, many of them built illegally, in the steep risk areas.
