SAO PAULO – The death toll from the rains that swept the coast of the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo a week ago reached 59 this Saturday, after the discovery of another five bodies in the city of Sao Sebastiao, the hardest hit by storms.
According to the authorities of the regional government of Sao Paulo, they are still looking for a dozen missing persons, who are supposed to be under the rubble to which numerous houses located on the slopes of the mountains of that region were reduced, in the that the rains caused serious landslides.
The rains began on the night of Saturday, February 18, and for almost 48 hours they severely punished this tourist area on the coast of Sao Paulo, at a time when that region was packed with tourists and most of Brazil was given over to the festivities of the Carnival, the most popular in the country.
According to the latest balance of the authorities, some 3,200 people remain housed in shelters, churches, schools and gyms in six cities, as their homes have been destroyed or are in areas considered to be at risk, where it is feared that new landslides could still occur. .
The searches for the disappeared continued to be concentrated in Sao Sebastiao and neighboring Ubatuba, where most of the fatalities have been registered.
The coast of Sao Paulo, one of the main tourist areas of the country, is bordered by mountains that in the last decades have been occupied irregularly and were undermined by the storms of the past weekend, considered the most voluminous that have been seen in that region.