Associated Press
PETROPOLIS, Brazil — Rescue workers dug through an ocean of mud Wednesday in search of victims of slides and flooding that killed at least 49 people across Rio de Janeiro state.
Hillsides gave way after two days of torrential Christmas rains, blanketing towns with sticky red mud and driving hundreds of people from their homes, authorities said.
Thirty-four people died Wednesday in the city of Petropolis, 40 miles north of Rio, state civil defense worker Sonia de Carvalho said. Some 1,500 residents were forced to flee their homes.
One woman said she was nearly buried by the mud but was pulled out by her niece.
"Without my niece, I surely would have died," Lenir Cabral said in a televised interview. "I was buried up to my head."
Mudslides forced police to close the main road from Rio to Petropolis, which declared a state of emergency.
Most of the victims were from poor neighborhoods perched precariously on hillsides in this mountain city, built in the 1800s as a summer resort for Brazil’s former emperors.
The disaster was not unprecedented. In 1988, mudslides killed at least 167 people in Petropolis.
"People refuse to leave," Rio de Janeiro state Gov. Anthony Garotinho said in a radio interview as he flew over the city. "Many of these houses fell in 1988, but people rebuilt them in the same place."
Garotinho pledged $12 million to help rebuild Petropolis. The federal government also promised to help.
In Rio, a mudslide slashed through a shantytown on Rio’s north side, killing five people. Ten others died in surrounding districts.
In the low-lying plain known as Baixada Fluminense, rivers burst their banks, flooding streets and forcing residents to abandon their homes.
"People are on their roofs waiting to be evacuated by boat," said Ney Suassuna, Brazil’s minister of economic development. He blamed the flooding on garbage dumped in streets and rivers, clogging storm drains and water run-off channels.
More rain was forecast for this week.
Floods and mudslides are common in Rio during the summer.
"The topography and the climate put the lives of thousands of people at risk," read an editorial in the Rio daily O Globo. "That one day the deluge will come is as sure as saying the temperature will rise in summer."
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