A Brazilian city is in danger of being swallowed by huge craters

Buriticupua city in northwestern Brazil, threatens to succumb to giant craters forming on the ground, swallowing pieces of the city. This phenomenon is reinforced by the lack of urban planning and aggressive deforestation in your area.

According to experts, Buriticupu could completely disappear in thirty or forty years by the advance of erosions on the earth, which look like ravines from the air. The city, with a population of 70,000, is suffering from the rise of what they call “voçorocas”, which means “torn land” in the Tupi-Guarani indigenous language.

Faced with the looming risk, the Buriticupu Mayor’s Office declared the state of “public disaster” on April 26 in an effort to get state and federal funds to begin erosion containment works.

Fifty houses have already succumbed to the craters, and another three hundred could also collapse. In addition, seven people died from falling into holeswhich have no signage or warning.

The entity revealed that the craters, which are 26, are tens of meters deep. The deepest erosion reaches 70 meters.

Augusto Carvalho Campos, a geographer from the Federal University of Maranhao, with a study dedicated to the voçorocas, explains that the wear of the soil in Buriticupu is severe due to urban growth “without proper planning, due to the lack of basic sanitation and insufficient water and sewage network”.

“Containment works are necessary and reforestation of the edges of the voçorocas” to limit erosion, says Carvalho.

The erosions expand with every heavy rain in Buritucupu.