Rescue teams search for survivors of the floods in Brazil. /
The alert situation remains throughout the week in fourteen municipalities of the State of Pernambuco, where five thousand families have lost their homes
Floods, landslides, thousands of homeless people and a list of deceased that is not yet closed. At least 91 people have lost their lives due to the effects of the heavy rains that have hit the State of Pernambuco and especially its large metropolitan region of Recife for a week.
The storm gave a truce last Sunday, but the forecasts for these days warn of meteorological instability that, according to the country’s National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (Cemaden, in Portuguese), requires maintaining maximum alert levels before the formation of new nuclei of torrential rains.
At least fourteen municipalities continue to be under an emergency situation. Tens of thousands of families have had to be evacuated; more than five thousand have lost their homes. And the governor of Pernambuco, Paulo Cámara, in the last report issued yesterday afternoon (noon in Brazil) put the fatalities at 91, pointing out that at least 26 people are still missing.
The northeast coast of the country usually experiences convulsive months of May due to heavy rainfall. The National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) issued the first rain alert on the northeastern coast on May 20, but the strongest scourge reached Pernambuco on Monday 23. In three days, 194 millimeters were recorded in the state alone, a level that the city only surpassed with the maximums of 1970 (335.8) and 1986 (235).
200 million fund
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who flew over the affected area on Monday to check the damage caused by the storm, announced resources to help the victims. Its Minister of Regional Development, Daniel Ferreira, specified that at least 200 million dollars of “extraordinary credit” (a fund already contemplated to combat the effects of natural catastrophes) have already been released. One part will go to rescue work, care for victims and reestablishment of essential services. And the other, to the «reconstruction» of the houses and premises destroyed.
One of the most tragic episodes of the floods took place last weekend in the Jardim Monte Verde neighborhood, between Recife and Jaboatao dos Guararapes, where at least twenty people died, buried by a landslide that swept away dozens of houses that were being built. over hills that collapsed. Although the authorities are working on seven landslide points throughout the Greater Recife metropolitan area, in addition to Monte Verde, Barro and Guabiraba, Paratibe, Zumbi do Pacheco, Curado IV and Areeiro.
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