Recent Updates: Burying dead grim task after Brazil mudslides

Flooding and mudslides are common in Brazil when the summer rains come, but this week's slides were among the worst in recent memory. The disasters punish the poor, who often live in rickety shacks perched perilously on steep hillsides with little or no foundations. But even the rich did not escape the damage in Teresopolis, where large homes were washed away. "I have friends still lost in all of this mud," said Carlos Eurico, a resident of Campo Grande, as he motioned to a sea of destruction behind him. "It's all gone. It's all over now. We're putting ourselves in the hands of God." In the same area, Nilson Martins, 35, carefully held the only thing pulled out alive since dawn: a pet rabbit that had somehow remained pristinely white despite the mud. "We're just digging around, there is no way of knowing where to look," he said. "There are three more bodies under the rubble over there. One seems to be a girl, no more than 16, dead, buried under that mud." The hundreds of homes washed away in the neighborhood were turned inside out, their plumbing and electrical wires exposed. Children's clothes littered the earth, cars were tossed upside down into thickets. An eerie quiet prevailed as people searched for life. The sounds of digging, with sticks and hands, were occasionally punctuated by shouts as another corpse was located. Conceicao Salomao, a doctor coordinating relief efforts at a makeshift refuge inside a gymnasium in central Teresopolis, said about 750 people were staying there Thursday and about 1,000 people had sought treatment in the past day. One danger she worried about was leptospirosis, a waterborne bacterial disease. "The hospitals around here are overflowing. The army and navy are setting up field hospitals to help," she said. Rio state's Civil Defense department said on its website that 222 people were killed in Teresopolis, 214 in nearby Nova Friburgo and 40 in neighboring Petropolis. It said about 14,000 people had been driven from their homes. An additional 37 people had died in floods and mudslides since Christmas in other parts of southeastern Brazil - 16 in Minas Gerais state north of Rio and 21 in Sao Paulo state. Nineteen-year-old Geisa Carvalho and her mother were awakened at 3 a.m. Wednesday by a tremendous rumble as tons of muck slid down a sheer granite rock face onto their Teresopolis neighborhood of Caleme. The power was out, but by lightning flashes they could see the torrent of mud and water rushing just a few feet (meters) from their home - and the remnants of their neighbors' houses that were swept far down a hill. "We were like zombies, covered in mud, in the dark, digging and digging," Carvalho said. Nearly all the homes in their neighborhood were swept to the bottom of a hill. Just a few rescuers managed to hike to Caleme on Thursday and they had only shovels and machetes - not the heavier equipment needed to hunt for survivors. Residents said they had no food, water or medication, and many made the long walk for help to the center of Teresopolis, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Rio. Morgues in the cities were full and bodies covered in blankets were laid in streets. Officials said the area hit by slides had seen 10 inches (26 centimeters) of rain in less than 24 hours. More rain is forecast through the weekend. President Dilma Rousseff flew by helicopter over the region Thursday and the Health Ministry said it was sending seven tons of medications, enough to treat 45,000 people for a month. Rousseff said the destruction was an act of God - but she also said people died because homes were illegally built in areas prone to slides. "We saw areas in which mountains untouched by men dissolved," she told reporters in Rio after the flyover. "But we also saw areas in which illegal occupation caused damage to the health and lives of people." --- Associated Press writers Bradley Brooks and Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo contributed to this report