They were stopped, waiting for their turn to drive up a road half of which was eaten away by a mudslide, leaving just one usable lane -- kept in priority for the lines of ambulances, police cars and army trucks heading into town.

This was the epicenter of the tragedy that befell Brazil this week, the focus of desperate efforts to find survivors of flash floods and landslides that killed more than 500 people in a mountainous area near Rio de Janeiro.

In Nova Friburgo, streets were packed with vehicles: residents leaving, or driving around, or trying to find relatives; emergency teams using sirens to cut through the traffic; and transit police in rain gear stopping the flow to let earth-moving equipment pass.

Yet the place was also had an abandoned feel, with shops shuttered and poorer residents picking through mountains of debris for anything useful. A horse sheltered near one group of scavengers. A few shop-owners cast wary eyes around as they bundled valuable merchandise into trucks.

One woman hastily throwing bags into her car, Marise Ventura, 54, said she and other locals had no choice but to leave the town.

"I'm going because there's no electricity anywhere, no water, no food... So I'm going to a relative's place," she told AFP before guiding her father into the passenger seat and driving off.

Many others were unable to go because of nearly non-existent fuel supplies.

The one gas station open had a line of more than 60 cars waiting.

Lucio Souza, a 36-year-old at the wheel of his car filled with passengers, said: "People have to take advantage of it being open to fill up. It's complicated."

He said many residents were still reliving the trauma of Wednesday, when tons of mud and water crashed into Nova Friburgo, killing at least 225 people.

"There was water everywhere, people screaming 'help, help'," he said. His northern neighborhood was destroyed. "Lots of people lost their lives, whole families disappeared, streets don't exist there anymore," he said.

In the town center, mud had taken over a square in front of a white church that still stood, near a half-buried bowling alley. The top half of public telephone posts peeked above the deep brown sludge.

A bulldozer worked to clear the area, but the task was monumental.

"It's a total calamity. The town is finished. It was a tourist city, now it's finished," said one local, Zaquequ Pereira Gonacalves, 37, who had come to take pictures.

Originally a 19th century getaway for Brazilian aristocracy, Nova Friburgo and neighboring Teresopolis and Petropolis -- also suffering badly from the disaster -- increasingly came to rely on tourism for their livelihoods.

Hotels say they have lost millions with the mudslides wiping out their usually lucrative summer vacation season just started.

Although the federal and state governments have pledged to restore the area, the extent of the damage was surely going to be felt for years to come.

The residents who have fled will likely return when power is connected and supplies assured.

But the economic scars will run deep -- as deep as the gouges in the hillsides above Nova Friburgo.

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