Rescue workers found dozens of bodies on Tuesday as they dug desperately through the wreckage of homes engulfed by mudslides in southern Brazil, boosting the death toll from rain-spawned hillside collapses and floods to 84.
As many as 30 people were still missing in small cities and towns across Santa Catarina state, where torrential weekend rains dumped as much water as the area usually gets in four months and far surpassed records going back to 1961.
Helicopters rescued at least 300 residents in Santa Catarina’s Itajai river valley who were surrounded by water. Television images showed one family on a grassy hill holding a bedsheet scrawled with the worlds “Sick Child” in a plea for help as a helicopter hovered overhead.
Most of the dead were killed in mudslides that swept away homes and businesses, and more than 54,000 people were displaced, civil defense officials said in a statement. On Tuesday alone, the death toll rose sharply when officials reported the discovery of 25 more bodies.
Olinda de Oliveria, retired and in her 60s, cried as she recounted how her dream home in one of the most devastated areas was destroyed by a mudslide.
“It was a nice house, with a garden, electronic gate and everything,” she told Brazil’s Globo TV. “But now you don’t see anything good, you don’t see anything.”
Eight municipalities with nearly 100,000 residents remained isolated and were running short of drinking water, medicine and fuel.
Business and industry was largely paralyzed across much of Santa Catarina because one of the mudslides ruptured a pipeline that supplies natural gas from Bolivia, an essential fuel here for cooking, cars and Brazilian factories. Six large textile mills shut down as a result, Brazil’s Valor Economico business newspaper reported.
Officials said it could take three weeks to repair the pipeline break in a remote area, Globo TV said, and the rupture also interrupted the flow of natural gas to the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Sul that borders Argentina and Uruguay.
Seventeen highways were blocked by mudslides. Officials said it could take days to reopen several that were piled high with earth and trees.
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