Brazil mudslide

Grieving mudslide survivors carried the bodies of loved ones for hours down washed-out mountainsides on Friday as the death toll hit 514. They told of entire neighborhoods in a resort city destroyed and pleaded for food and water to reach those still isolated by Brazil's deadliest natural disaster in four decades. Officials said the death toll in four towns north of Rio de Janeiro was still rising and could jump further once rescuers can reach areas cut off by Wednesday's slides. They refused to even guess how many remain missing. Local reports put it in the hundreds. After morning rains caused delays Friday, rescuers resumed efforts, but manpower or resources had yet to reach many in Teresopolis, a mountain city of 163,000 alongside a national park that hosts a major training site for Brazil's national football team. It is the worst natural disaster to hit Latin America's biggest nation since flooding and slides in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states killed 785 people in 1967, according to the Brussels-based International Disaster Database, which has records of deadly natural events in Brazil since 1900. 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.