70,000 people forced to leave their homes as deadly floods hit Brazil

Porto Alegre:

Nearly 70,000 people have been forced to flee their homes amid deadly floods, landslides and torrential storms in southern Brazil, with the large city of Porto Alegre particularly hard hit, the country’s civil defense agency said on Saturday.

The strong floods left 57 dead, 74 injured and another 67 missing, civil defense said.

The death toll did not include two people who died in the explosion at a flooded gas station in Porto Alegre, witnessed by an AFP journalist, where rescuers were trying to refuel.

Rapidly rising water levels in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were overwhelming dams and particularly threatening the economically important city of Porto Alegre, a city of 1.4 million people.

The Guaíba River, which runs through the city, reaches a historic height of 5.04 meters (16.5 feet), well above the 4.76 meters that had been a record since the devastating floods of 1941.

Authorities struggled to evacuate flooded neighborhoods as residents struggled in chaotic conditions to find their way to safety.

In addition to the 69,200 residents forced to abandon their homes, civil defense also said that more than a million people did not have access to drinking water during the floods, describing the damage as incalculable.

Rio Grande do Sul governor Eduardo Leite said his state – normally one of the most prosperous in Brazil – would need a “Marshall Plan” of heavy investment to rebuild itself after the catastrophe.

In many places, long queues formed as people tried to board buses, although bus service to and from the city center was cancelled.

Porto Alegre International Airport suspended all flights this Friday indefinitely.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva posted a video of a helicopter depositing a soldier on top of a house, where he used a brick to make a hole in the roof and rescue a baby wrapped in a blanket.

In a northern suburb of Porto Alegre, José Augusto Moraes, 61, looked shaken after rapidly rising floodwaters swallowed his home and he had to call firefighters to rescue a trapped child.

“I lost everything,” he told AFP.

‘It’s going to be much worse’

With waters beginning to overtop a dike along another local river, the Gravataí, Mayor Sebastião Malo issued a stern warning on social media platform X, saying: “Communities must leave!”

He urged people to ration water after four of the city’s six treatment plants had to be closed.

In a live broadcast on Instagram, Governor Leite said that the situation is “absolutely unprecedented”, the worst in the history of the state, home to agro-industrial production of soybeans, rice, wheat and corn.

Residential areas were submerged as far as the eye could see, with roads destroyed and bridges swept away by strong currents.

Rescue teams faced a colossal task, with entire cities inaccessible.

At least 300 municipalities have suffered storm damage in Rio Grande do Sul since Monday, according to local authorities.

‘Water up to your waist’

Around a third of those displaced were taken to shelters set up in sports centers, schools and other facilities.

“When I left the house, I was in water up to my waist,” Cláudio Almiro, 55, looking haggard, told AFP in a cultural center converted into a shelter in a suburb north of Porto Alegre.

He said that although he lost everything, “many people lost their lives, so I raise my hands to heaven and thank God that I survived.”

The rains also affected the south of the state of Santa Catarina, where a man died on Friday when his car was swept away by strong floods in the municipality of Ipira.

Lula, who visited the region on Thursday, attributed the disaster to climate change.

The devastating storms were the result of a “disastrous cocktail” of global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday.

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 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”.

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