Natural disasters hit different world countries

Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state placed emergency teams on maximum alert on Thursday as heavy rains that have displaced 35,000 residents were forecast to continue, reviving fears of mudslides and flooding that killed about 900 people last year.

Residents scrambled to gather their belongings and flee in the Tres Vendas district of Campos de Goytacazes in the north of the state, after a dike ruptured, sending water rushing through the streets. Emergency workers said more than 1,000 families from Tres Vendas were evacuated to shelters.

"We're trying to put up stone barriers to prevent the water advancing but it's difficult," Rosinha Garotinho, prefect of Campos and a former state governor told Reuters Over 200 firefighters battled against a wildfire, near the town of Wilmington, 280 kilometers north of the city of Adelaide, in South Australia.

The blaze has burnt around 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of land. The fire broke out on Wednesday (January 4), with wind and rough terrain hampering firefighter’s efforts.                
The fire had not reached the town of Wilmington, but authorities told residents to be on alert in case a wind change moved the fire in their direction. Shifting winds caused flames to sweep over a group of firefighters battling wildfires in Chile on Thursday, killing six of them, badly burning two and leaving another missing.

A tenth firefighter listed as missing after his brigade was trapped in the flames was later found unhurt. Almost 50 wildfires have sprung up in southern Chile, destroying hundreds of houses, forcing the evacuations of thousands of people and causing millions of dollars in damage to the forestry and tourism industries that fuel the economy in the country's Patagonia region.

In Philippine authorities resumed searching Friday for victims of a landslide that killed at least 22 people in a remote gold-mining village where miners work their small-scale claims with pickaxes.     

Officials have no good estimate of how many people are missing but say early reports of up to 100 were overblown. Many could have stayed elsewhere for the Christmas holiday, they said, or may have fled their mountainside shanties earlier in the night when the hill started to crumble.       

The land fell with a loud whoosh hours before dawn Thursday on a mountain dotted with mine shafts and crude shanties with corrugated metal roofs in Napnapan village in the southern province of Compostela Valley.