The Brazilian government said that it would accelerate efforts to devise a national system for preventing disasters and alerting the population quickly when they occur, in response to the deadly landslides in the state of Rio de Janeiro last week that killed at least 710 people.
A destroyed church stands surrounded by debris and floodwaters after a landslide in Teresopolis, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Thursday Jan. 13, 2011
Rescue workers search for victims after heavy rains caused mudslides in a low-income neighborhood in Teresopolis, some 100 km from downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 12, 2011.
President Dilma Rousseff met with ministers and announced the government’s plan to improve its disaster readiness, which will include maps of high-risk areas, better training and improved collection of data on meteorological conditions. The national system will be completely in place in four years, but it is expected to produce results by next year, the government said.The announcement appeared to be a response to news reports that a Brazilian government official had admitted to the United Nations two months ago that a large part of a promised emergency response system was not ready and that the government did not have the ability to verify the efficiency of many existing services.
Rescuers hurry to help a man swept along by the waters in the flooded Kaleme neighborhood in Teresopolis, Brazil on January 12, 2011
The slope on a hill where a landslide occurred in Nova Friburgo, 130 km north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 13, 2011
A report sent to the United Nations by Ivone Maria Valente, the national secretary of the National Civil Defense authority, notes that almost one in four cities in Brazil lack a civil defense authority. And where a civil defense authority exists, it does not have a way to measure if it is functioning efficiently, according to the report.
A villager walks in a flooded street after heavy rains in Atibaia January 15, 2011.
Rescue workers and residents search the rubble of a building that collapsed in a landslide in Nova Friburgo, Brazil on January 13, 2011
Ludmila Moura, 5, sits on a mattress at a shelter for people displaced by landslides in Nova Friburgo, Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011, Ludmila was pulled out of her destroyed house by her father Marcelo Moura on the first night of heavy rains last Thursday
An official at a United Nations agency, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, provided a copy the report, whose content was first reported by the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo.Ms. Valente reported that the small number of municipal authorities created to deal with disasters made it “impossible to measure, in a reliable way,” which cities were prepared for disasters.
While the government said it had made advances in disaster preparedness, it also noted that it had not analyzed the readiness of any hospital or school in preparing the report.The lack of a risk-reduction program “will contribute to the increasing occurrence of natural disasters” and to “increasing insecurity in local communities,” Ms. Valente wrote.
Brazilian marines aboard a helicopter loaded with humanitarian aid fly over an isolated area severely hit by landslides in Sumidouro, 70 Km from Teresopolis, Brazil, on January 18, 2011.
Brazilian National Force rescue workers find the body of a man at the scene of a recent landslide, where seven people were found buried among debris in the neighborhood of Jardilandia, in Nova Friburgo, Brazil on January 19, 2011
Disaster experts have contended that Brazil’s lack of disaster-warning systems and a general lack of preparedness was responsible for the deadly scale of the disaster last week, which with its increasing death toll has become the country’s worst natural disaster. In addition to more than 700 people killed, nearly 14,000 are homeless or have abandoned their homes in Teresópolis, Nova Friburgo and Petrópolis — the three hillside towns struck hardest by the heavy rains.
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