Landslides in southeastern Brazil have claimed 50 lives, according to a new report announced Thursday by authorities, on the fifth day of research. São Paulo state firefighters were still hard at work on Thursday in hopes of finding the dozens of people still missing in São Sebastião, a seaside town particularly affected by bad weather, located 200 km from São Paulo. .
“The more time passes, the less likely we are to find people alive. But we are still working towards this goal,” said a rescuer. Rescuers mainly focused their search efforts on the Vila Sahy district, where several houses on the hillside were buried by a mudslide.
More than 680 millimeters of rain fell in 24 hours in São Sebastião, more than twice the monthly precipitation. A national record, according to the São Paulo state government. The governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, admitted Thursday that the population alert system by SMS had not made it possible to avoid the tragedy. The latter announced the installation of sirens in risk areas. “2.6 million alerts were triggered before the rains by SMS. And we saw that it was not effective. Here on the coast, more than 30,000 people have received the warning message,” the governor said at a press conference.
Experts attribute these extreme events to a combination of the effects of climate change and uncontrolled urbanization. In Brazil, 9.5 million people live in areas prone to landslides or floods, many of them in favelas lacking basic sanitation, according to the National Center for Monitoring and Warning of Natural Disasters (Cemaden ) from the country.