Mudslides in Brazil

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.

Mudslides in
Brazil

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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