"From what the neighbors said, some 200 people may be buried, but it is not clear, there could be more," local fire chief Pedro Machado told AFP Thursday as crews battled to dig through mudslides in Niteroi, a city across the bay from the city of Rio.
Twenty-five people, including eight small children, were pulled out alive on Thursday after spending hours buried under mud and debris.
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The rescues fueled new hope for anxious relatives desperate to find their loved ones, as 150 rescue workers -- soldiers, firefighters and civil defense workers armed with spades and pickaxes -- searched for more survivors.
Bodies recovered
Six bodies had been recovered following the mudslide late Wednesday in a Niteroi slum.
But firefighters said there was little chance of finding survivors after part of the hillside fell away and slid some 700 meters (yards) swallowing everything in its path, including 50 houses, a day-care center and a pizzeria.
The death toll on Thursday rose to 157 in floods and mudslides around Rio since it was hit Monday by the worst rains in half a century.
Most of the casualties were trapped in landslides in the slums around Rio, a metropolis of some 16 million people that will host the World Cup football tournament in 2014 and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Death toll to rise
The toll was likely to rise as dozens of people were reportedly still missing after the rains, which displaced more than 1,400 people and destroyed scores of homes.
Sabrina Carvalho de Jesus, 26, a hospital worker, escaped with her life when the earth began to move, but her grandfather, mother and six-year-old son were buried.
"Honestly, I don't hold out hope any more" for her missing loved ones, she said. They were under "an awful lot of earth, and being buried for 12 hours -- that's a lot of time," she added.
The head of the Niteroi public services, Jose Mocarzel, said the Morro do Bumba shantytown had been built up over the past 25 years on an old landfill site and was particularly at risk.
A strong odor of methane lingered among the trash-strewn streets.
Residents urged to stay indoors
Flooding over the past days has been so intense that authorities urged residents to remain indoors. Rainfall lessened by Wednesday, but was predicted to continue all week.
Emergency officials said most fatalities were in slums around Rio de Janeiro and announced plans to try to evacuate tens of thousands of inhabitants fearing further loss of life.
Various officials and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized decades of negligence which allowed shoddy home construction in high-risk zones.
But the authorities were blasted in the press for failing to anticipate the disaster.
"Where is the emergency plan?" said the daily O Globo.
"The tragedies of the rains in Rio have been repeated over 40 years and the authorities do not react," the newspaper said.
The killer floods wreaked havoc with air traffic, delaying most international flights in and out of Rio's Antonio Carlos Jobim airport and forcing the cancellation of many domestic services.
Brazil had already seen deadly deluges in Sao Paulo earlier this year after the wettest summer in the region in more than six decades. National weather service Inmet said Tuesday's rainfall was the heaviest in 48 years.
