Shantytown was built on a former rubbish dump making the ground unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains
Associated Press
At least 200 people were feared dead today after being buried under tons of mud when a slum on top of a former landfill gave way in the latest landslide to hit Rio de Janeiro.
This week 153 people were already known to have died in landslides triggered by record rains in the metropolitan area before the disaster in the Morro Bumba slum in Niteroi, a city of 500,000 people across the bay from Rio.
Pedro Machado, of the civil defence department, told Globo TV that up to 60 houses and at least 200 people were buried in Morro Bumba. "In our experience, it's an instant death," Machado said.
Agostinho Guerreiro, president of Rio's main association of engineers and architects, said the shantytown was built on a former garbage dump making the ground unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains. "It is very fragile soil. It couldn't hold [the rain]," he told Globo. The federal government announced an emergency fund of 200m reals (£75m) to help with the mudslides and flooding.
A fire department spokesman said six bodies had been found and 28 people were rescued. Alves Souza, commander of the firefighters, said the wet, steep terrain posed a continued threat to anyone trapped in the wreckage and to emergency crews.
The Rio mayor, Eduardo Paes, said 1,500 families were going to be removed from their homes in at least two Rio slums, and that more evictions were likely. "I don't want to spend next summer sleepless, worrying if the rains are going to kill somebody," he said.
The heavy rains plunged Rio into chaos this week, snarling traffic, knocking down trees and power lines, opening up enormous craters in streets and sending wastewater flowing to the white sand beaches of the city of 6 million.
In the Rocinha slum, officials said 41cm (16in) of rain has fallen so far this month – three times the amount normally expected for all of April. Similar figures were seen across Rio's metropolitan area.
Rio state The civil defence said at least 11,000 people were forced from homes and 10,000 houses were threatened by landslides.The toll in Rio has already surpassed that of 2008 flooding and mudslides in the southern state of Santa Catarina that killed nearly 130 people and displaced about 80,000.
The Guardian
