Crash Homes on Brazil Infrastructure Woe

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil –

Aviation chaos, unpaved highways and the threat of energy rationing point to perhaps Brazil’s greatest challenge in its quest to become an economic superpower: How to upgrade its overburdened infrastructure.

The government is planning to spend billions of dollars in coming years to modernize and expand strained roads, power plants and ports in a bid to accelerate growth in South America’s largest economy.


But decades of infrastructure neglect, due to years of economic instability in the wake of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980’s, will not be quickly remedied. The strain, in some cases, is having disastrous consequences.

Last week’ airline crash at a Sao Paulo domestic airport, in which 199 died, and a radar outage over the Amazon days later brought international attention to issues for years plaguing the country’s aviation system: Precarious radar coverage, poorly trained air traffic controllers and antiquated runways ill-equipped to handle modern jumbo jets.

AP