Angra dos Reis, Brazil: Brazil mudslide death toll reaches 64

Angra dos Reis, Brazil: Brazil mudslide death toll reaches 64

Firefighters using heavy machinery, shovels and bare hands dug for survivors Saturday but only found corpses under a mountain of red earth and crushed lodgings — the worst of a spate of mudslides and floods that has killed at least 64 people in southeastern Brazil.

At least 26 people died in the New Year's Day slide that buried an upscale resort on the island of Ilha Grande, including the 18-year-old daughter of the couple who built the waterfront lodge at the foot of a cliffside covered with rain forest.

Authorities said no foreigners were known to be among the dead.

A torrent of mud tore a 1,000-foot scar down the hill, pushing parts of the Pousada Sankay resort and three neighboring houses into the sea shortly after guests had retired to their rooms following New Year's Eve celebrations.

Minutes earlier on the mainland, a torrent of reddish mud cascaded into the Carioca slum in the nearby coastal city of Angra dos Reis, killing at least 13 people and reducing rickety shacks to rubble.

The dual mudslides early on New Year's Day were triggered by 10 inches of rain that had drenched the region since Wednesday.

"We came to celebrate the New Year and then all this sadness happened," Fernanda de Oliveira, a witness to the mudslide on Ilha Grande, told the O Globo newspaper.

Oliveira was staying in a house beside the Pousada Sankay when she heard a rumble in the middle of the night.

"We couldn't see what was happening. It was raining hard and the water was leaking into our house," she told the newspaper. "Suddenly, we saw people in the sea and we went down to rescue them. They were people staying in the Pousada."

Nearly 80 other mudslides have been reported throughout the region in recent days. Together with flooding, they have killed at least 64 people — 39 people on Ilha Grande and Angra dos Reis and an additional 22 people in other parts of Rio de Janeiro state.

Please DONATE: Help victims of mudslide in Brazil

Please let the victims of the mudslide in the Prefecture of Angra dos Reis, Brazil: http://www.angra.rj.gov.br/asp/index.asp