Why build a homestead on a site like this?



NITEROI, Brazil -- At least 200 people were buried under tons of mud and feared dead on Thursday after a slum built atop a former landfill gave way in the latest deadly landslide to hit metro Rio de Janeiro.

If confirmed, the deaths would raise the toll sharply from the 153 people already known to have died this week in slides triggered by record rains.

Pedro Machado, subsecretary of Rio state's Civil Defense department, told Globo TV that as many as 60 houses and at least 200 people were buried in the Morro Bumba slum in Niteroi, a city of about 500,000 just across the bay from Rio.

"In our experience, it's an instant death" for anyone caught in such a slide, Machado said.

The shantytown was built on a former garbage dump where trash had accumulated for decades -- making the ground there especially unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains, said Agostinho Guerreiro, president of Rio's main association of engineers and architects.

"It is very fragile soil. It couldn't hold (the rain). The houses came down, destroying the ones below them," Guerreiro told Globo. "It was a tragedy foretold."

http://www.wsbtv.com/nati...etail.html

That's awful.

the poor build everywhere in Rio! there just isn't good housing in good areas of rio for the poor. they build slums all over the city.

What's wrong with the world today?