People are being evacuated from an area in Canoas in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Photo: Carlos Macedo / AP / NTB
Of NTB | 05.05.2024 02:34:00
Weather: In addition, 74 people are injured and 67 are still missing, the country’s civil defense says.
The million-dollar city of Porto Alegre is particularly hard hit. The Guaiba River, which flows through the city, has a flood level of 5.04 meters, well above the 4.76 meters recorded during the catastrophic flood of 1941.
Over 1 million people lack access to drinking water.
In many places there are queues of people trying to get on buses, despite the bus routes in and out of the city being cancelled. On Friday, all flights to and from the international airport in Porto Alegre were suspended indefinitely.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has posted a video of a soldier being hoisted onto a rooftop from a helicopter and using a brick path to break through a roof to save a baby.
The flood is caused by heavy rainfall. The devastating storm is the result of a “catastrophic cocktail” of global warming and the El Niño weather phenomenon, climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP.
(© NTB)