(Rio de Janeiro) At least 11 people lost their lives in the collapse of an illegally occupied building in Paulista, not far from Recife in northeastern Brazil and three missing are still wanted, according to a report released on Saturday by the authorities.
Firefighters were digging through the rubble in search of a woman and two children, missing in the disaster that occurred on Friday, also injured 11, aged 5 to 45, according to the Civil Protection of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
A 65-year-old woman and two teenage girls were able to get out alive, they said.
The three-storey building adjoined a large housing complex, according to images released by the local press.
The apartments there had been closed in 2010 due to a risk of collapse but they were occupied illegally, added Civil Protection.
In April, another building in the same condition collapsed in Olinda, still in the state of Pernambuco, killing 6 people.
It is most often in poor neighborhoods, where illegal construction is commonplace and where the population has less easy access to healthy housing, that this type of disaster occurs.
Episodes of heavy rain add a risk of landslides and an additional threat to residents of illegal housing.
In 2020, the collapse of illegally built buildings in a favela in Rio, to the southeast, after several days of intense rain, left 24 dead.
In February, 65 people lost their lives in a landslide caused by record rains in Sao Sebastiao, a tourist resort 200 km from Sao Paulo (southeast). In 24 hours, it had rained more than twice the monthly precipitation.
About 9.5 million people live in areas at risk of landslides or flooding out of Brazil’s 215 million inhabitants, according to official figures.