Housing sought for landslide survivors

Associated Press

TERESOPOLIS, Brazil

Days after mudslides wiped out whole neighborhoods, many residents continued to live in homes in threatened areas, unwilling to join the thousands crowded into shelters despite the ever-present danger to their lives.

Rali Oliveira da Silva, 35, spent several years building a home for his family in Cascata do Imbui, saving little by little for the cement, the bricks, the paint. The house was still standing Sunday, but its concrete patio now hung precariously over a yawning precipice, the empty space left by a slide that killed most of his downhill neighbors.

Oliveira da Silva knows his home could be next. But he said he has no money to rent another place, much less buy land elsewhere and start over, so he’s staying put for now.

Survivors who lost everything and those clinging to homes on unstable ground face an uncertain future as they try to rebuild lives torn apart by the landslides that struck mountain towns outside Rio de Janeiro and killed at least 626 — a death toll that rises every day as more bodies are pulled from the mud.

Municipal, state and federal officials were responding Sunday, setting up a center to register missing persons; distributing 35,000 free cell phones donated by a telecommunications company; and announcing immediate plans to relocate some 2,500 people housed at a packed gymnasium to 18 smaller, better organized shelters at churches, warehouses and other spaces.