No let up yet for floodbattered south Brazil

AFP | Porto Alegre, Brazil

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The rains may have abated, but floodwaters yesterday continued their assault on southern Brazil, with hundreds of municipalities in ruins amid fears that food and drinking water may soon run out.

Since the unprecedented deluge started last week, at least 83 people have died and 129,000 were ejected from their homes by floods and mudslides in Rio Grande do Sul state, authorities said.

The search is becoming ever more desperate for 111 reported missing among the devastation. The disaster, which experts and the government have linked to climate change, has left the state resembling “a scene out of a war,” the state’s governor Eduardo Leite said Sunday.

In total, 364 cities, towns and villages have been hit, many of which remain cut off from the world without access to drinking water or electricity or any means of calling for help.

In Porto Alegre, the state capital with 1.4 million inhabitants, many suburbs remained under water even as the sun shone Monday.

“Last night, the water came up to the corner and had stabilized. Today, we woke up and it was outside my house and rising,” Neucir Carmo, a 62-yearold resident of the Floresta neighborhood, told AFP.

“We don’t know how high it will go.”

The Guaiba River, which flows through the mega-city of high-rise buildings and wide streets, reached a record high level of 5.3 meters (17.4 feet) Sunday -- well above the historic peak of 4.76 meters that accompanied devastating floods in 1941.