Death and destruction on in Brazil: "Like a tsunami" (Feature)

By Diana Renee Jan 13, 2011, 17:43 GMT

Teresopolis, Brazil - In this flood-hit city of Teresopolis, where at least 146 people have died in an unfolding disaster, workers groped for words to describe the aftermath.

'A tsunami, Haiti, call it what you want. The situation here is chaotic,' Herculano Abrahao, Red Cross coordinator in Teresopolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, said Thursday.

This city of 150,000 people some 100 kilometres from the city of Rio de Janeiro is among the worst-affected by torrential rains which claimed more than 360 lives in less than 24 hours Wednesday in the state's mountainous region.

It has already become the worst one-day natural disaster in the country's recent history, surpassing the 300 lives claimed by heavy rains and flooding in January 1967.

The death toll continued to rise, fast, on Thursday, as rescue teams worked to reach some of the worst-hit areas in the cities of Teresopolis, Nova Friburgo and Petropolis.

'It is a catastrophic situation. There are whole neighbourhoods that have been destroyed, as if an earthquake had happened there,' said Teresopolis Mayor Jorge Mario Sedlacek.

Sedlacek noted that rescue teams have yet to reach four neighbourhoods devastated by the storm, where 'all streets and bridges were destroyed.'

The three cities are historically a summer holiday refuge for many Brazilians seeking a temperate climate and the region's last remnants of the so-called Atlantic Forest, which has been largely destroyed elsewhere.

Today, the cities are the image of destruction. Mud slides have washed down mountains and covered the streets, collapsed homes and buried cars that were swept off by the current.

Risk analyst Moacyr Duarte, who visited Teresopolis Thursday, said mudslides forced local rivers out of their banks, washing over the region with unusual force and speed and ravaging everything in their way. He estimated the currents moved at 80 km per hour.

'Everything was very fast and, since it happened overnight, there was no time for reaction,' the expert said.

According to Duarte, it would take 'a miracle' for rescue teams to find survivors in the mud and rubble.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff left Brasilia Thursday for the first time since her inauguration on January 1 to meet with Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral and fly over the affected areas.

Rousseff released some 464 million dollars Wednesday to assist victims of heavy rains not just in Rio, but also elsewhere in the southern and south-eastern regions of Brazil and those affected by the drought in the northeast.

The mayor of Teresopolis dismissed the sum as insufficient, saying rebuilding bridges, streets and roads in his city alone would cost around 350 million dollars.

The priorities for now, however, are to find shelter for over 2,000 people displaced from their homes, to identify the dead and to rescue those who remain under the rubble.

The federal government sent to Rio 225 National Security Force troops to cooperate in rescue efforts in the three cities, for which two Navy helicopters have also been deployed.

The flooding has triggered debate about the total lack of preventive measures to deal with frequent rain-related disasters of the Brazilian summer. Last year, more than 500 people died in storms across Brazil.

Experts stress that such measures would require generous government investment in engineering works, but also strict laws to prevent people from building homes in risky areas, including river banks and hillsides.

'There are engineering solutions for this. In the developed world, investment comes before, to protect life, and not afterwards, to cry over deaths,' said Wilson Lang, a member of the Pan-American Academy of Engineering.

Duarte agreed with Lang.

'Brazil is not such a poor country that it cannot take measures to prevent disasters caused by the rain,' Duarte said.

However, the absence of preventive policies, he said, is a 'time- bomb' that is ready to explode whenever an extreme climatic phenomenon occurs.

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