The death toll from floods and landslides triggered by torrential storms in southern Brazil rose to 39 on Friday, authorities said, as they warned of worse to come.
As the rain continued to pour down, rescue teams on boats and planes searched for dozens of missing people among the ruins of collapsed houses, bridges and roads.
Rising water levels in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were overloading dams and threatening the metropolis of Porto Alegre with “unprecedented” flooding, authorities warned.
“Forget everything you saw, it will be much worse in the metropolitan region”, governor Eduardo Leite said Friday, as the streets of the state capital, with a population of about 1.5 million, began flooding after days of heavy rain in the region.
The state’s Civil Defense said at least 265 municipalities have suffered storm damage in Rio Grande do Sul since Monday, injuring 74 people and displacing more than 24,000 – a third of whom were taken to shelters.
At least 68 people were missing and more than 350,000 suffered some type of damage, according to the most recent data.
And there was no end in sight, with authorities reporting an “emergency situation, presenting a risk of failure” at four dams in the state.
– ‘Disastrous cocktail’ –
Meanwhile, the level of the state’s main Guiaba river was estimated at 4.2-4.6 meters (about 13.7-15 feet), but could not be measured because the gauges were destroyed, the mayor of Porto Alegre said. .
As it continued to rise, authorities rushed to reinforce flood protection.
The worst flood recorded in Porto Alegre was in 1941, when the river reached a level of 4.71 meters.
In other parts of the state, several cities and towns were completely isolated from the world, in what Governor Leite described as “the worst disaster in the history” of Rio Grande do Sul.
Many communities were left without access to drinking water, telephone or Internet services.
Tens of thousands had no electricity.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited the region on Thursday, promising that there will be “no shortage of human or material resources” to respond to the disaster, which he attributed to climate change.
The central government sent planes, boats and more than 600 soldiers to help clear roads, distribute food, water and mattresses, and set up shelters.
School classes were suspended across the state.
Climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday that the devastating storms were the result of a “disastrous cocktail” of the El Niño weather phenomenon and global warming combined.
South America’s largest country has recently experienced a series of extreme weather events, including a cyclone in September that claimed at least 31 lives.
Aquino said the region’s particular geography means it has often been confronted by the effects of colliding tropical and polar air masses – but these events have “intensified due to climate change”.
And when they coincide with El Nino, a periodic climate system that warms the tropical Pacific, the atmosphere becomes more unstable “and prone to storms in Rio Grande do Sul,” he said.
Extreme flooding has hit the state over the past two years at “a level of recurrence not seen in 10,000 years,” said Aquino, who heads the geography department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
Northern Brazil recently suffered a historic drought and the number of forest fires reached a record high in the first four months of this year.
“Rain in the south, fire in the north… These two tragedies bear the fingerprints of the climate crisis”, warned the NGO Observatório do Clima in a statement.
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