Two days after the most important rains in ninety years in this tourist town of Southeast of Brazil, the balance sheet, at least 104 dead, is always temporary.
Le Monde with AFP
Brazil lives a particularly murderous rainy season this year. Two days after the highest rains entered in ninety in Petropolis, Brazil, at least 104 people have lost life in floods and landslides of Petropolis, announced, Thursday, February 17, the Defense Civil.
“At this point we recorded 104 deaths and firefighters have found survivors,” announced the civilian defense of this tourist town of Southeast of Brazil, 60 km north of Rio.
In the streets of Petropolis, many inhabitants spoke Thursday morning of the missing, whose number officially rises to 35, found a journalist from the France-Press agency (AFP). Firefighters worked all night in the city of 300,000 inhabitants, but had to stop a few hours due to soil instability, sips of water.
The always provisional assessment rolled the day before at hour, after the torrential rains, which have transformed the picturesque streets of the center in the rivers of mud, flattened houses and reversed dozens of cars.
The “state of calamity” decreed
In less than six hours, some points in Petropolis received up to 260 millimeters of water, a volume greater than what was expected for the whole month of February, according to the Metsul Meteorological Agency. The Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro, spoke at a press conference “The worst rains since 1932”. The municipality has decreed the “state of calamity” to deal with the emergency.
Images circulated on social networks And in the media, showing homes destroyed by landslides and cars violently swept away by the current. Huge amounts of mud have engulfed from the homes and sheet metal roofs ripped off the ground. An important flow of muddy water was always flowing from the hills, Wednesday morning. Many shops have been completely flooded by the water that has shown in the streets of the historic center of Petropolis.
from Russia, where he is visiting, the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, wrote Wednesday on Twitter that he was informed of “tragedy” and asked his ministers to bring “immediate help to victims”. “May God comfort the families of the victims!”, Has he added.
Petropolis, summer residence of the former imperial court, is a tourist destination, which attracts a large number of visitors. In January 2011, more than nine hundred people had perished in the Rio mountainous region due to heavy rains that had provoked floods and landslides in a vast region including Petropolis and Nova Friburgo, Itaipava and Teresopolis nearby towns.