World News for Students of English

06-01-2016 07:00

A mudslide in southeastern Brazil has killed four people when two houses collapsed and eight people were buried after heavy rains.

The fatalities include a grandmother who managed to save the life of her one-year-old granddaughter by throwing her arm over her to protect the child.

Local media said that the civil defense has banned residents from returning to 37 homes in the disaster zone due to a risk of further landslides in the area.

In the last few years, the increasing frequency of floods, high winds and storms has become part of the new normal in Brazil with mudslides becoming much too regular an occurrence. Scenes of widespread devastation like this one are not uncommon and the death toll is often hard to predict as bodies remain trapped in the rubble.

Difficult words: collapse (to fall down quickly), fatality (a death), ban (to keep someone from going somewhere), resident (a person who lives somewhere), zone (an area), new normal (something that used to be rare that now happens often), occurrence (an event), devastation (when something is badly or completely damaged), death toll (the number of people who died), rubble (the pieces of a building).