Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday hugged weeping residents and promised free houses to those who had lost their homes in landslides triggered by torrential rains that killed 70 people in the country’s southeast.
Thousands were left homeless after mud swept away their houses in the cities of Juiz de Fora and Uba this week, leaving desperate residents seeking loved ones under piles of sludge and debris.
Firefighters said Saturday that they were still searching for three missing people, while the police updated the death toll to 70, including 13 children.
Lula flew over the disaster area before landing and meeting grief-stricken residents and officials.
He promised that his government would give free houses to those whose homes had been destroyed, outside of the at-risk areas where they had been living.
“We are going to help these people recover by giving them houses,” Lula said at a press conference.
“The only thing we cannot give back to the city are the lives that have been lost. We don’t have the power to bring human lives back, but we will give people the right to live with decency and dignity.”
According to the latest update from the fire brigade, just over 3,800 people have been made homeless by the landslides.
The tragedy is the latest in a series of extreme weather disasters in Brazil, from floods to fires and drought, many of which scientists have linked to the effects of global warming.
In 2024, more than 200 people died and two million were impacted by unprecedented flooding in southern Brazil, one of the worst natural disasters in its history.
“Science indicates that there will be more and more extreme weather events like the one that happened here in Minas Gerais, as happened last year in Rio Grande do Sul,” Jader Barbalho Filho, Minister of Cities, told the press conference.
“There is only one alternative: investments in prevention,” he said.
Brazil’s meteorological agency INMET told AFP that parts of the southeast were experiencing the rainiest February in years.
Rainfall in Juiz de Fora -- a hilly city of half a million people -- has already exceeded 760 mm (30 inches) in February, more than triple its usual monthly average.
Brazilian meteorologist Carlos Nobre attributed the unusually heavy downpours to a passing cold front system over the “very warm” Atlantic Ocean.
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