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From UPI
RIO DE JANEIRO, April 8 (UPI) -- Emergency crews spent
Thursday recovering bodies from another mudslide in
rain-soaked Rio de Janeiro officials said they feared
claimed 200 people's lives.
The BBC reported the mudslide inundated part of a slum in
Niteroi, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, late Wednesday.
At least 50 buildings were destroyed, including a nursery
for children, the British network said.
Civil defense spokesman Pedro Machado told the Globo news
network at least 200 people were feared buried.
"In our experience, it's an instant death (for those caught
in their homes)," Globo quoted Machado as saying.
Local media said about 20 people were pulled from the debris
alive.
The region has been wracked by several other mudslides
previously this week that had pushed the death toll to 150.
That number is now expected to spike sharply, the BBC said.
The slides have been triggered by what Brazil's national
weather service says has been the most rain in 48 years.
Efforts were under way to distribute food, medicine and
other basic necessities to those affected by the mudslides.
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said 4,000 families were
left homeless and 10,000 houses remained at risk.
The GCP event was set for the full 24 hour day of April 8,
because no precise time for the actual mudslide was
available. The time was probably early morning, perhaps
around 6 or a bit later, UTC. The graph below shows this
approximate time. The result was Chisquare 85916.039 on
86400 df, for p = 0.878 and Z = -1.165.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical
effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from
noise. This means that every "success" might be largely
driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect
can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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