Brazil:
Torrential rains in northeastern Brazil have killed at least 44 people and left dozens missing, the government said on Sunday, as rescuers took advantage of a lull in the showers to search for survivors.
“We registered 44 dead, 56 missing, 25 injured, 3,957 without shelter and 533 displaced,” Regional Development Minister Daniel Ferreira told a news conference in Recife, the capital of the hard-hit northeastern state of Pernambuco.
The disaster is the latest in a recent series of deadly landslides and floods caused by extreme weather in Brazil.
The death toll had risen from 34 since Saturday, with at least 28 dead from landslides, as torrential rains caused rivers to overflow and mudslides wiped out everything in their path.
Authorities warned that heavy rain was forecast for Sunday, but the storm abated in the morning.
When the weather started to break, some 1,200 employees resumed search and rescue work, state officials said, but Ferreira urged caution.
“While it has now stopped raining, we predict heavy rainfall in the coming days,” he said.
“So the first thing is to maintain self-protection measures.”
Between Friday night and Saturday morning, rainfall in some parts of Recife reached 70 percent of what had been forecast for all of May.
‘Tragedy’
Images circulated on local media of rescuers and volunteers clearing heaps of rubble in Jardim Monteverde, on the border between Recife and the municipality of Jaboatao dos Guararapes, where 19 people were killed Saturday morning in a landslide that ripped through dangerously constructed homes.
Luiz Estevao Aguiar, who lives in another municipality, lost 11 family members in the disaster, he told TV Globo.
“My sister, my brother-in-law, 11 people in my family died. It was hard…I didn’t expect this,” he said in tears.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Sunday he would travel to Recife on Monday after the “tragedy.”
Over the past year, hundreds of Brazilians have died in floods and landslides caused by torrential rains.
In February, more than 230 people were killed in the city of Petropolis, the 19th-century summer capital of the Brazilian Empire, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
At the beginning of last month, another 14 were killed by floods and landslides in the state.
Experts say Brazil’s rainy season downpours are amplified by La Nina – the cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean – and by climate change.
Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, global warming increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.
The risks of heavy rainfall are magnified by the topography and poor construction in slums built in steep areas.
According to MetSul agency meteorologist Estael Sias, the heavy rains that are plaguing Pernambuco and, to a lesser extent, four other northeastern states are the product of a typical seasonal phenomenon called “eastern waves.”
He explained that these are areas of “atmospheric disturbances” moving from Africa to Brazil’s northeastern coastal region.
“In other parts of the Atlantic, this instability forms hurricanes, but in northeast Brazil it has the potential for a lot of rain and even thunderstorms,” he said.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)