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From Saturday 27 April in Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil near the border with Argentina, heavy rains and strong winds they are causing floods that are particularly difficult to manage. According to Brazilian authorities, at least 55 people have died due to floods and landslides caused by the rain, and police are investigating another seven deaths which also appear to be linked. Another person died in the neighboring state of Santa Catarina, also in the south of the country, after the car they were in was swept away by the current.
Seventy-four people are still missing, over 25 thousand have had to leave their homes and 500 thousand are left without access to electricity and a source of drinking water. In some areas the flooding is so severe that entire towns have been left completely isolated, with roads and bridges destroyed.
More than half of the 497 cities that make up the state were affected by the storm, but the situation is particularly complex in the Bento Gonçalves area, where a hydroelectric dam collapsed killing 30 people and another risks collapsing due to excessive rising of the water level. In Porto Alegre, the state capital, rescuers had to use jet skis to move along the streets in search of the missing. The city’s international airport has suspended all flights until further notice.
The governor of Rio Grande do Sul Eduardo Leite he said that the ongoing emergency is “absolutely unprecedented”: the Brazilian geological agency esteem that the only comparison is with the floods that hit this area in 1941. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva promised that “there will be no shortage of human and material resources to minimize the suffering that this extreme event is causing in the state.”
Further rain is expected in the coming days. Climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino he explained toFrance Media Agency that the region has always been affected by intense climatic events, caused by the collision of tropical and polar air masses, but that these events have intensified due to climate change. Last year, a total of 75 people were killed in three separate floods.