A four-year-old girl who lay for more than 15 hours under the rubble of her home, which collapsed after hitting a slope during a severe storm in Petropolis, in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, was rescued alive this Saturday after being discovered by a fire detection dog. When a house collapsed in the Independencia area, the girl’s father, a 25-year-old man, could not stand it and was pulled out of the rubble on Saturday morning, already dead.
The girl and her entire family were buried early this Friday evening when the slope behind the house gave way to the weight of heavy rain that fell for several hours and crashed down on the house, which was destroyed and covered with tons of debris. dirt, rocks and trees. The quick actions of neighbors and firefighters, who were already on duty throughout the city before the storm hit as the weather service warned that the rain would be very heavy, allowed five people to be rescued alive from the fire. The first moments. The same family, but the father and girl remained buried.
The sniffer dog, a crucial aid in such tragedies, covered the entire area of the collapse and at some point became very agitated and sat on the ground – a sign that someone was still alive there. Firefighters began digging, much of the time using small tools and their own hands, as the rest of the slope threatened to collapse and bury everyone, preventing the use of larger, heavier vehicles, but the girl continued to be missing for many hours. .
The animal, however, continued to insist that at that moment there was something still fighting for its life under the mountain of mud and stones, and the firefighters continued their hard work even into the early hours of this Saturday, made even more difficult by the heavy rain that did not stop . On this Saturday morning, the sensitivity of the tracking dog and the heroic work of the firefighters were rewarded, and the girl was saved alive.
Videos posted by the firefighters themselves show the emotions that engulfed everyone when it was confirmed that the girl was alive, and neither the tireless peacekeepers nor the residents of the region who gathered around could avoid tears of wonder. By late Saturday morning, rains that had lashed several cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro had already killed seven people, including the father of a rescued girl, while firefighters continued to search for several missing people buried in landslides or washed into rivers due to strong current formed on streets and roads