Rescuers yesterday searched for more bodies from an avalanche of mud and rock that buried a luxury Brazilian hotel filled with New Year’s revelers, as the death toll from heavy rains in the south of the country stood at 63.
Twenty-eight people were killed in the tragedy at the hotel on Ilha Grande — a resort island southwest of Rio de Janeiro — and another six people injured.
State officials said another landslide in the nearby city of Angra dos Reis, south of Rio de Janiero, left at least 13 people dead, part of a series of mudslides brought on by incessant rains that have killed at least 63 people across the state of Rio de Janeiro since Wednesday and left dozens missing.
PHOTO: EPA
Authorities said the Hotel Sankay was full to capacity with about 40 guests, including children, ringing in the New Year at the idyllic seaside getaway on Bananal beach.
The complex is nestled at the bottom of a jungle-covered hillside which gave way before dawn on Friday on New Year’s Day, transforming a paradise into a hell.
“It was a deafening noise, I’ve never heard anything like it — a loud thunder that wouldn’t stop,” Felipe Gomes Martins, a hotel neighbor, told Brazil news Web site G1.
“There was a lot of earth, mud, trees — trees falling and taking away everything,” said Martins, 32, who described how he and his father helped rescue some 60 people as the landslide swamped the area.
Rio Deputy Governor Luiz Fernando Pezao said it was “a vision of horror,” describing it to CBN radio as “a mountain of rocks and trees covering various homes.”
Nearby houses had also been rented out to vacationers.
A fire chief said the death toll at the hotel site could rise to 40, and rescue teams were speeding their search amid warnings of the possibility of new landslides.
“The whole area is in severe danger of new landslides due to the vegetation,” Fire Department commander Pedro Machado told Globo News.
About 100 rescue workers and firefighters, aided by rescue dogs, wrestled to remove tonnes of mud, rocks and thick tree trunks in the hope of finding victims alive on Ilha Grande, but “the chances of finding survivors are very slender,” Machado said.
“We cannot use heavy equipment because of the risk of setting off new landslides,” he said.
Authorities said rescue operations would likely continue another 48 hours, adding that most of the bodies recovered earlier were found on land. At least three more had been pulled from the sea.
In the center of the city of Angra dos Reis, a seaside town on the mainland overlooking Ilha Grande Bay, another landslide buried several houses, killing at least 13.
A top Brazilian geologist said “the natural risk is very severe” in locations like Bananal beach.
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