Brazil: Flood Death Drama Has No End – 165 Reached

It goes up daily the death toll from floods and landslides in Brazil with the victims now amounting to 165, according to the latest data announced by the authorities yesterday, Sunday, February 20th.

At the same time, severe weather conditions have claimed the lives of at least two people, the emergency services announced in the state of Espirito Santo, which is adjacent to that of Rio de Janeiro, where Petropolis is located.

A man was killed when he was crushed by a wall in the city of Allegre. Another man was swept away by a torrent as he tried to save a car in the city of Nova Venezia, reports the APE-MPE, citing AFP.

“Theater of War”

Rescue crews and residents continued to search for the missing yesterday, digging huge volumes of mud and debris in the 300,000-strong city of Petropolis, where President Zaich Bolsonaru said what he saw was similar to a “war theater”.

The number of missing fell as some of the bodies recovered were identified, while families located the survivors, according to police. However, the final report is still uncertainwhile the death toll does not stop rising.

Authorities now consider it unlikely to find survivors in the mountains of mud and debris. Until yesterday, 124 bodies had been identified, including 28 children. There are more than 1,200 residents of Petropolis who have been forced to flee their homes.

Torrential rains that fell last Tuesday in the mountain town of 300,000, about 60 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro, turned its roads into torrents and caused catastrophic landslides. In six hours in Petropolis it rained that had a volume approximately equal to that of the precipitation of the whole of February according to the historical average.