Brazil face flood cleanup as more landslides feared

Brazilians emerged Saturday to face the chaos and destruction left by three days of torrential rains, rivers of mud and landslides that have killed 555 people in the country's worst flood disaster on record.

The steady rain eased up a bit as rescue teams and residents picked through the wreckage of hillside communities near tourist hotspot Rio de Janeiro.

The soil, however, remains saturated with water, and officials fear more landslides.

Rio de Janeiro state declared a week of mourning for the dead starting Monday and authorities made an urgent appeal for donations of blood, bottled water, food and medicine.

Some 14,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, Civil Defense officials said.

The death toll, however, is not final as rescuers continue to search amid the mud-covered rubble for bodies. At least a dozen remote hamlets remain out of touch, and one witness reported seeing a group of people buried by a river of mud inside their car.

Forecasters warned that the wet weather was likely to last into next week.

"It will keep raining until at least next Wednesday in the Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro. We are predicting a light but steady rain, which is not good because it could lay the conditions for more landslides," said the head of the national weather institute, Luiz Cavalcanti.

Hardest-hit were the towns of Nova Friburgo -- where at least 249 people were reported dead -- Teresopolis, Petropolis and Sumidouro, Civil Defense officials reported.

More than one-third of Nova Friburgo, 140 kilometers (84 miles) north of Rio de Janeiro, still had no electricity or drinking water Saturday, and the city lacked fuel -- even for rescue vehicles -- food and medicine.

Residents trying to flee were hampered by the lack of fuel, and long lines formed outside gasoline stations that were open.

In Teresopolis, where some 240 people were killed, some stores opened Saturday as National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets to prevent looting.

At the town cemetery workers labored non-stop to bury identified bodies. Morgue workers were so overwhelmed that a local judge ordered that unidentified bodies be kept in refrigerator trucks for at least a month.

At the cemetery, a dog named Leo curled up at the grave site of a woman named Cristina Maria de Santana, refusing to leave his master even though she had been buried two days earlier, workers told AFP.

Forecasters have blamed the unusually wet weather on the La Nina phenomenon which has increased rainfall in southeast Brazil.

"The forecast of more rains is not reassuring," said Rio governor Sergio Cabral, urging residents to abandon their homes in the disaster zones and move to safer ground.

In downtown Nova Friburgo, a blanket of mud covered a plaza in front of a white church. Bulldozers and plastic-clad workers were clearing the area.

"It's a total calamity. The town is finished. It was a tourist city, now it's finished," said local resident Zaquequ Pereira Gonacalves, 37.

The government allocated 100 million reals (59 million dollars, 44 million euros) in immediate emergency assistance to the affected area.

"Half of this money will be in state and municipal accounts on Monday," announced National Integration Minister Fernando Bezerra.

Storms dumped the equivalent of a month's rain in just a few hours before dawn Wednesday, sending mudslides slicing through towns and hamlets, destroying homes, roads and bridges and knocking out telephone and power lines.

Churches and police stations in the affected towns have been turned into makeshift morgues, the stench of decomposing corpses heavy in the warm air.

Originally a 19th century getaway for Brazilian aristocracy, Nova Friburgo and neighboring Teresopolis and Petropolis increasingly came to rely on tourism for their livelihoods.

Hotels say they have lost millions of dollars, wiped out by mudslides at the start of their usually lucrative summer vacation season.

Source - Yahoo.