Floods in Brazil | Death toll rises to 100, rain suspends evacuations

(Porto Alegre) The death toll from unprecedented floods in southern Brazil reached the 100 mark on Wednesday, with relief operations in the regional capital Porto Alegre also having to be interrupted due to new rains.

In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a rich agricultural region hit throughout the last week by torrential rains, scenes of desolation follow one another.

Driven from their homes by the waters, residents of the Santo André favela in Porto Alegre set up a makeshift camp on a deserted highway. “I’m terrified, but what can I do? “, confided Adan Moreira dos Santos, a 55-year-old trader.

The human toll is already heavy, but still provisional: 100 dead, 130 missing, 374 injured, according to Civil Defense.

Porto Alegre (around 1.4 million inhabitants) and more than 400 localities were hit by these exceptionally violent bad weather, forcing more than 163,000 people to flee their homes.

The Guaiba River, which crosses the metropolis and experienced a historic flood of up to 5.30 meters, fell to 5.06 meters on Wednesday, but the situation remains very delicate.

Volunteers went out in the morning on small boats or jetskis to navigate the flooded streets and evacuate residents still trapped by the waters, but also those who are reluctant to leave their homes for fear of burglaries.

But the return of rain cut short the rescue operations. Near the flooded football stadium of the local team Grêmio, where a disembarkation zone was improvised for the evacuees, the volunteers had to store their boats, AFP journalists noted.

On the social network X, the town hall requested that “boats engaged in rescue operations temporarily suspend their activities”. She also mentioned “winds exceeding 80 km/h”.

The authorities also appealed to the victims not to try to return home, as their homes were weakened.

In addition, “contaminated water can transmit diseases,” warned Sabrina Ribas, spokesperson for Civil Defense.

Pestilential odors

About ten days after the start of the rains, the smell is nauseating in Porto Alegre because of the stagnant water which sometimes resembles open landfills.

And rain is still expected in the metropolitan region from Friday to Sunday.

In the south of the state, flooding is expected to reach “serious proportions” in the coming days due to the “colossal” volume of water in the Guaiba and other rivers, warned the specialist site MetSul Meteorologia.

The state government has taken emergency measures for five dams, two of which are at “risk of imminent failure”.

At the same time, initial assessments of material damage are being established.

Nearly 61,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, according to the National Confederation of Municipalities, which revised downwards a previous figure of 100,000.

Economic losses reach 6.3 billion reais (around 1.24 billion Canadian dollars), according to projections from this body. The damage suffered by schools, hospitals and town halls is estimated at 351 million reais (94 million Canadian dollars).

Imported rice

After the flooded Porto Alegre airport closed, the Canoas military base on the outskirts was mobilized to accommodate commercial flights transporting aid and passengers, the air force announced.

According to the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastian Melo, the authorities are also working to build a “humanitarian corridor” between the city and its region, a key point for supplying the city, where there is already a lack of drinking water.

For the moment “nothing is missing, except water”, but “for certain products we draw from our stock”, said Roger da Silva, 36, manager of a supermarket in Viamao, a town east of the capital.

The federal government announced that it would import 200,000 tonnes of rice to guarantee supplies and also avoid speculation on prices, with Rio Grande do Sul supplying more than two thirds of the rice consumed in Brazil.

The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, deplored in a press release the loss of human lives in Brazil and stressed that disasters of this kind constitute a “reminder of the devastating effects of the climate crisis”.