The Brazilian city of Petrópolis was on high alert again on Friday evening as sirens sounded after forecasts of further heavy rain, three days after severe thunderstorms left at least 122 people dead and dozens missing.
The number of missing in the floods and landslides remained unclear. The police announced a figure of 218 people. But she did not specify whether she counted in this total the bodies not yet identified or the people already found.
In the morning, President Jair Bolsonaro flew over the disaster areas, a few hours after his return to Brazil after an official trip to Russia and Hungary.
“I saw a lot of destruction, like scenes of war,” said the head of state during a press conference. “We were able to become perfectly aware of the gravity of what happened here”.
The sirens had already sounded the alarm Thursday evening and Friday morning, when heavy rain fell in risk areas of the city of 300,000 inhabitants.
“There are risks of landslides in this area, be careful, get yourself in a safe place, in reception structures”, could be heard through loudspeakers in the early hours of the day.
The rain then eased in the afternoon, but further heavy rain was expected in the evening, according to Civil Defense.
“Everyone is very scared, we jump at the slightest noise,” says Atenor Alves de Alcantara, a 67-year-old retired metallurgist, whose house is in the lower part of the Alto da Serra district, the most affected by the landslides.
Feeling of abandonment
More than 500 firefighters, with helicopters, diggers and sniffer dogs, remain mobilized to tirelessly search for the missing, while the hope of finding survivors among them is increasingly slim.
Hundreds of volunteers also went to lend a hand, including a large number of residents of neighborhoods devastated by some 400 landslides, forced to dig themselves to try to find relatives.
In Alto da Serra, nearly 80 houses were swallowed up by a mudslide. “There could be another 50 people down there, 98 bodies have already been removed since Tuesday,” Roberto Amaral, coordinator of the Civil Fire Department’s natural disaster rescue group, told AFP.
The town hall also announced that it had removed more than 140 cars that had been overturned on the streets or washed into the city’s waterways.
Many residents of Petrópolis said they felt neglected by the authorities. “The population is entitled to criticize, but it is a region which experiences a lot of dramas of this kind”, reacted President Bolsonaro.
He was referring in particular to 2011, when more than 900 people died due to floods and landslides in a vast region including Petrópolis and the neighboring towns of Nova Friburgo, Itaipava and Teresopolis.
“Unfortunately, other tragedies have taken place here. We do what is in our power,” he continued, adding that it was “complicated to predict everything that can happen in 8.5 million km2” (the area of Brazil).
Pope’s condolences
Pope Francis sent a message of solidarity to the victims on Friday.
“The Holy Father, learning with great sadness of the tragic consequences of the landslides, asked the bishop to convey his condolences to the families and shares the pain of all the bereaved”, can we read in a Vatican press release.
On Tuesday, Petrópolis, the former summer residence of the Imperial Court, received more rain than the average for an entire month of February.
The austral summer was particularly deadly in Brazil, with torrential rains that have killed dozens in recent months in the states of Bahia (northeast), Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo (southeast).
This extreme precipitation is linked, according to experts, to global warming.