Buriticupu, Brazil, May 4 (AFP\/APP): A few steps from a cliff edge, Deusimar Batista is hanging clothes to dry in her yard. Near it, a neighbor’s house used to stand on a residential street, but they have all collapsed into the abyss.<\/p>\n
Batista is from the city of Buriticupu, in northeastern Brazil, where residents are living a nightmare: the earth beneath them is literally breaking open into enormous craters, which have swallowed streets, houses and even killed people.<\/p>\n
“It used to be really nice here,” said Batista, a slight 54-year-old who works as a seamstress.<\/p>\n
“But now it’s like this — all destroyed,” she told, motioning to the gorge that now marks the edge of her yard, empty except for some trash at the bottom.<\/p>\n
Experts say the rare phenomenon is caused by deforestation and a lack of urban planning in the city of 70,000 people, located in the impoverished state of Maranhao.<\/p>\n
Buriticupu, which sits at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, expanded quickly in the 1970s as the site of a housing program for rural workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Buriticupu, Brazil, May 4 (AFP\/APP): A few steps from a cliff edge, Deusimar Batista is hanging clothes to dry in her yard. Near it, a neighbor’s house used to stand on a residential street, but they have all collapsed into the abyss. Batista is from […]<\/p>\n
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