Man killed by 2-ton boulder

Hi all,

Most weekdays I catch the metro, and most weekdays I grab a Destak (which would translate as something like “highlights”), a free tabloid newspaper distributed outside many of the metro stations. Destak allows me to kind of keep up with the news while sharpening my Portuguese.

Most of the headlines are of the mundane type: sports, corruption among the politicians or police, Lady Gaga’s planned visit to Brazil. So the following headline in today’s paper caught my eye:

Pedra de 2 toneladas mata um em boca de túnel

This basically translates as:

2-ton boulder kills man at mouth of tunnel

OK, I thought, this bears reading, as I refolded the paper.

The article was short, so I will translate it (poorly) more or less in its entirety:

A rock of almost 2 tons slid from the morro dos Prazeres [literally, "Hill of the Pleasures", which adds a bit of irony to our story] in Santa Teresa, and killed Joaquim César da Silva, 57, who was talking with two friends on Baron de Petropolis Street [Petropolis means "rock city"], in Rio Comprido, below the hill.

According to the friends, Joaquim had been a retired civil engineer, but because he suffered from alcoholism, he came to live on the street, earning a living by collecting and selling articles he found.

The accident closed the Rio Comprido-Laranjeiras Tunnel until 11:00 am yesterday.

The article concludes by noting that last year there were 34 deaths due to landslides in this same area.

One certainly has to feel sorry for poor Mr. Silva. Yesterday morning was lovely, it hadn’t rained in a couple of days, so I’m sure that being clocked by a 4,000-pound chunk of granite was pretty much the last thing on Silva’s mind (oops, that was unintentional) as he chatted with his friends.

Unfortunately, landslides and falling rocks are fairly common in Rio, especially in the rainy months. Rio sprawls around cones of granite. Favelas, now typically referred to euphemistically as “communities”, have spread up the sides of the hills. These communities and the areas directly below them are most at risk. Most tourists would not be staying in these areas and so would not be subject to risk.

Believe it or not, I know of a similar incident that occurred when I was a child living in mountainous western North Carolina. In that case, however, the boulder fell on the hood of a car and the driver narrowly escaped the same fate as Mr. Silva.

Até mais,

John

 

 

 

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