China News Agency, Sao Paulo, February 19 (Reporter Mo Chengxiong) According to the news released by the municipal government of Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as of the evening of February 19 local time, the death toll due to heavy rain in the city has risen to 152 165 people are missing. At present, the search and rescue is still going on.
The Civil Defense Department of Petropolis said that on the 19th, the city’s rainstorm relief work entered its fifth day. Search and rescue personnel carried out search and rescue work at more than 50 locations in three key areas that day. At present, nearly 1,000 homeless people have been properly resettled.
The weather in the city was unstable that day, with intermittent rains forcing search and rescue efforts to suspend many times. The search and rescue personnel believe that it is still possible to find survivors in the disaster area, so the current search and rescue work still cannot dispatch large equipment such as forklifts, and must rely on search and rescue dogs and rescuers to search.
Rio de Janeiro state governor Claudio Castro said the state government plans to invest 150 million reais ($1 equals 5.13 reais) in the reconstruction of infrastructure projects in the city of Petropolis .
The Brazilian federal government has announced on the 18th that it will allocate 500 million reais to the flood-stricken areas in the country, including the city of Petropolis, and said that it will first allocate 2 million reais of emergency relief funds to Petropoli next week. The city of Sri Lanka is used to purchase emergency supplies as well as city cleaning and river dredging.
According to Brazilian media reports, the number of people killed in the floods in Petropolis has more than doubled the death toll from the same torrential rain in the city in 2011. On January 11, 2011, torrential rains hit the Regiao Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro state, where the city of Petropolis is located, killing more than 900 people. Among them, 73 people died in Petropolis. That flood was dubbed “the worst climate disaster in Brazil’s history”. (over)