Floods in southern Brazil kill at least 75 people in seven days: NPR

RIO DE JANEIRO — Massive flooding in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul has killed at least 75 people in the past seven days and another 103 have been reported missing, local authorities said Sunday.

At least 155 people were injured, while damage caused by the rains forced more than 88,000 people to leave their homes. About 16,000 took shelter in schools, high schools and other temporary shelters.

The floods left a trail of devastation, including landslides, washed out roads and collapsed bridges across the state. Operators reported power and communications outages. More than 800,000 people are without water supplies, according to the civil defense agency, which cited figures from the Corsan water company.

A rescue team loaded an elderly man in serious condition onto a helicopter from a remote area of ​​the municipality of Bento Gonçalves, according to images from military firefighters. Torrents of brown water poured over a nearby dam.

On Saturday night, residents of the town of Canoas stood in shoulder-deep muddy water and formed a human chain to pull boats taking people to safety, according to a video shared by the network. local news UOL.

The Guaiba River reached a record level of 5.33 meters (17.5 feet) on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. local time, surpassing levels seen during a historic flood in 1941, when the river reached 4.76 meters.

“I repeat and insist: the devastation to which we are being subjected is unprecedented,” said the state governor. Eduardo Leite said on Sunday morning. He had previously said that the state will need a “kind of ‘Marshall Plan’ to rebuild.”

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visited Rio Grande do Sul for the second time on Sunday, accompanied by the Minister of Defense, José Múcio, the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, among others. The leftist leader and his team surveyed the flooded streets of Porto Alegre from a helicopter.

“We need to stop running after disasters. We need to see in advance what calamities could occur and we have to work,” Lula told reporters afterward.

During Sunday Mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was praying for the state’s population. “May the Lord welcome the dead and comfort their families and those who had to leave their homes,” he said.

The downpour began on Monday and was expected to last until Sunday. In some areas, such as valleys, mountain slopes and cities, more than 300 millimeters of rain fell in less than a week, as reported this Thursday by Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology, known by the Portuguese acronym INMET.

The heavy rain was the fourth such environmental disaster in the state in a year, following floods in July, September and November 2023 that killed 75 people.

The climate in South America is affected by the El Niño climate phenomenon, a periodic and natural event that warms surface waters in the Equatorial Pacific region. In Brazil, El Niño has historically caused droughts in the north and heavy rains in the south.

This year, the impacts of El Niño have been particularly dramatic, with a historic drought in the Amazon. Scientists say extreme weather is occurring more frequently due to human-caused climate change.

“These tragedies will continue to occur, getting worse and more frequent,” said Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of dozens of environmental and social groups.

Brazil needs to adapt to the effects of climate change, it said in a statement Friday, referring to a process known as adaptation.