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David Stanley Ford

Alligators, hunger threaten Brazilians
Thousands flee rainfall, flooding

By The Associated Press   
Published: May 8, 2009

SAO MIGUEL DE ROSARIO, Brazil — The dirt road in front of her house is a river. Her fields of rice are underwater. And with water seeping into her home, Maria do Remedio Santos knows it’s time to leave.

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at a glance
Brazilian flooding

→The flooding was sparked by unusually heavy rains that have been falling for two months on 10 of Brazil’s 26 states. They forecast weeks more of the same.

→Rivers were still rising as much as a foot a day in the hardest-hit state of Maranhao.

→Paulo Barreto with the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment said such events put stress on the environment "that could affect ... plant and animal species.”

Like 218,000 others in northern Brazil, Santos fled the worst rainfall and flooding in decades, braving newly formed rivers teeming with alligators and legless reptiles whose bite is excruciating.

Already, 36 people have been killed in the flooding. But authorities worried about thousands of people isolated for days with little food or clean water.

"There isn’t enough food, they even have a shortage of tents,” said Maranhao state’s Maj. Wellington Soares Araujo.

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David Stanley Ford


Related Topics: Weather, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, Floods, Reptiles and Amphibians


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