TERESOPOLIS, Brazil – They are tired, hungry, traumatized – and resigned to saving themselves without the aid their government promised after massive mudslides that killed nearly 600 people.
Wanderson Ferreira de Carvalho lost 23 family members – including his wife and two-year-old son – in massive mudslides, yet spent yesterday hauling water and food up steep jungle trails. Emotionally numb, physically exhausted, he knew nobody else was going to help save friends in his remote neighbourhood, isolated after a road was washed out.
“We have to help those who are alive,” he said as he hauled supplies five miles (eight kilometres) up the dangerous trail.
“There is no more help for those who are dead. I’ve cried a lot and sometimes my mind goes blank and I almost forget what happened. But we have to do what we must to help the living.”
Hundreds of survivors are in the same situation as Carvalho, forced to save themselves after torrential rains earlier this week triggered rumbling mudslides early Wednesday in mountain towns north of Rio de Janeiro. The death toll had risen to 598 by yesterday, and there were fears it would climb sharply higher once remote areas were reached.
Helping friends
Carvalho seemed to find solace in working feverishly to help his friends. After he got word that his father’s body was found badly decomposed, he also decided that he didn’t want rescuers to try and find his son and wife.
“I would rather not see him now,” Carvalho said of his son.“Whoever is buried, it’s better to leave them in peace.”
While Carvalho and others are angry at the lack of government help, they also seem oddly resigned, as if having to save themselves after Brazil’s worst natural disaster in four decades were not unusual.
At the base of the steep hills leading up to Carvalho’s Campo Grande neighbourhood, only a few firefighters and two federal policemen were seen – and they were not helping people carry supplies.
Local and state fire departments said they had deployed 2 500 rescuers, while 225 federal policeman were in the area to maintain order. The federal government has been trying to fly in 11 helicopters to remote areas, but has found it difficult because of poor weather conditions.
Simone dos Santos Pinto, a 36-year-old resident of the Campo Grande neighbourhood who was hiking supplies up to her sick, 65-year-old father, said there was no help, and she could not understand why.
“There is nothing,” she said, plastic grocery bags strapped across her shoulders and in her hands. “I’m leaving my father up there and my house is about to collapse. But what am I going to do?”
The mudslides hit an area of nearly 900 square miles in lush, forested mountains about 40 miles north of Rio. The deaths are centred in Teresopolis and three other towns, where many wealthier citizens of Rio maintain weekend homes. (AP)
