“I no longer sleep, I no longer eat, the pain is too strong,” said Maria Lucia da Silva, a resident of Jardim Monteverde, one of the areas most affected by the torrential rains which caused at least 91 dead in Recife, in the northeast of Brazil.
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This 56-year-old housewife was able to evacuate in time to avoid being submerged by a mudslide, but her neighbors were not so lucky: 11 people from the same family died and a 12th was carried disappeared.
“I’m very sad, it’s like it’s my family. I have lived here for 40 years, most of them I have seen them grow up, ”she says.
“The 11 bodies that were found are going to be buried this afternoon, but they are still looking for my friend’s niece. She was 32 years old, the age of my daughter”, continues this black woman who wears sunglasses to hide her tears.
“I can’t say anything more, otherwise I’m going to cry again,” she says, between sobs.
In Jardim Monteverde, a poor neighborhood on the hillside on the border of Recife, capital of Pernambuco, and the municipality of Jaboatao dos Guararapes, dozens of firefighters continued Monday to search for the twenty people who disappeared in the pouring rain.
At the top of the hill, some houses are still standing, but a few meters away you can see a sheer chasm, almost vertical, where a thick layer of mud has devastated everything in its path.
Below, a pile of debris, pieces of bricks, clothing, toys and other personal objects of the victims of the landslide.
“Like a tsunami”
Mario Guadalupe, a 60-year-old retiree, narrowly escaped disaster.
The mudslide “nearly washed away my house. I saw everything and I know all those who died, ”assures this half-breed with thick glasses and a graying mustache.
“First I saw a piece of land fall, and right after that it was like a tsunami. The mud devastated everything”.
His modest home, miraculously preserved, is now used as a storage place for food distributed to the victims.
“We cannot say that it was an announced tragedy. I’ve lived here for 40 years and we’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
“It is surely a phenomenon linked to global warming, because we had never seen so much rain in such a short time”, he continues, fearing that other similar tragedies will happen again: “It helps us to ‘warning for the coming (austral) winter’.
Meteorologists attribute the torrential rains that fell on Pernambuco to a phenomenon called “eastern waves”, usual at this time of year, with heavy clouds moving from the African continent to the Brazilian coastal region.
In a few hours, in the night from Friday to Saturday, it fell 70% of the total volume of precipitation expected for the whole month of May.
Even if no one expected such a tragedy, some residents turned against the authorities.
“A lot of people here have lost everything. Not only their homes, but their lives! We need medicine, food,” says Jailson Gomes de Souza, a 34-year-old mason dressed in a yellow raincoat.
“Jardim Monteverde calls for help! You should not come here just to campaign before the elections,” he warns.
