Community hardest hit by landslides in Brazil mourns their dead

Marcio looked on in disbelief: about twenty men were clearing dirt, logs and stones to dig up the bodies of his parents, whose house, where they lived for 30 years, was destroyed by an explosion. destructive temporary on the Brazilian coast.

Ms. Neuzinha and Mr. Mauro, as they were called by the people of Morro de Vila Saja, in the state Sao Paulo (southeast), “they were always together and that’s how they found them,” Marcio told AFP, without giving his last name, before bursting into tears on the relative’s shoulder.

The house turned into a pile of rubble avalanche it left a crack in the bushes on the hill and a deep trail of pain in the community hardest hit by last weekend’s hurricane, where at least 48 people died and 38 were missing.

Landslides at this and other points along the coast erased the track and left the municipality of St. San Sebastianrestricting access to boats and helicopters.

on the slopes of vila sakhi Dozens of firefighters, soldiers, police officers, volunteers and neighbors worked Tuesday in the midday sun on a common task: to find people buried under the landslides that partially destroyed this makeshift community of about 3,000 people.

With diggers, chainsaws, shovels, and even RF technology to detect cell phone signals, work teams were spread out across the area.

hopes are over

Foreseeable bad news awaited the relatives and friends of the missing next to every mountain of destruction.

Antonio da Silva, a short mason, teetering between debris next door to the military in charge of searching for his three teenage nephews.

There the water washed away two houses towards one of them relativeswhere two more bodies and a child were found alive.

“A miracle,” the fireman defined, without identifying himself.

Tayara Lopez, a 26-year-old domestic worker, also called it a miracle to escape the “bog” that plunged her up to her shoulders into the kitchen.

“I was holding on to a tree trunk and my husband helped me out. Then we climbed onto the roof, ”said the girl, showing her scratched and bruised legs.

But as the hours passed, hardly anyone expected new miracles.

“The mud with a lot of accumulated materials and the number of nearby houses make it difficult,” said Rodrigo de Paula, captain of the civilian fire brigade.

“More and More Bodies”

Elenilson Batista Gomez, 47, has been barely out of breath since he arrived on Sunday looking for news about his son Caio and daughter-in-law Michelle, who have been married for four months.

“I won’t leave until I find them; I am going to bury my son and his wife with dignity,” he said, hurrying resume search where someone said they heard cries for help after the landslide.

Four police dogs tracked the corpses in a bare area, where, according to neighbors, there were a dozen houses. They found the body of a man against a wall and two others under an uprooted tree.

Although he had spent the last three days supporting rescuers, Natalia Cerqueira felt “useless”. “We do and we do, and it seems that we do nothing. We clean up the dirt and there is always more of it, we find bodies and there are more,” said the 25-year-old school cook.

“Fear”

Maria Vidal knew many of those who were “unfortunate” survive to the stream that passed in front of his door, at the top of the block.

“My legs were shaking, I was just trying to grab my grandson,” said the 50-year-old woman, who has never experienced such a tragedy.

“The images of dead children recur to me non-stop,” she lamented, arranging her curly hair to hide crying in front of her four-year-old grandson who made a Superman doll fly.

With the house intact, Lucas da Rocha also made no secret of his sadness at the loss of “what matters”: friends.

“I am waiting for the road to be cleared so I can go with my family. The hill could collapse again at any moment,” said the 31-year-old father of two.

New afternoon thunderclouds And thunders forced to interrupt saves. rain increased the threat.

“You can’t live with that fear,” da Rocha said.

AFP