Alert after a violent storm in southeastern Brazil. At the end of the week, the country was drowned in a deluge of rain, particularly the state of Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 23 people. In Petrópolis, where four people died in the collapse of a house and a small building, an AFP team assisted this Saturday morning in the rescue of a little girl who had been buried for sixteen hours under the rubble , and the discovery of her father’s body near her.
“The father heroically protected the little girl with his body and she was saved (…) We are in pain, but grateful for this miracle,” Luis Claudio de Souza, 63, neighbor and owner of the property, told AFP. ‘a neighborhood bar.
Thousands of people deprived of shelter
In total, the state of Rio de Janeiro has recorded eight deaths since the start of the bad weather on the night of Friday to Saturday, in the cities of Petropolis, Teresópolis, Santa Cruz da Serra and Arraial do Cabo, according to the government. Four people also lost their lives, and seven are missing, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, according to civil defense.
The storm deprived several thousand people of shelter, said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in a message published overnight from Saturday to Sunday on the X platform. Such tragedies “are intensifying with climate change “, recalled the President of Brazil, a country plagued by repeated natural disasters. Some 241 people died in the tourist town of Petropolis in 2022, following heavy rains. Lula also expressed his sympathy to the victims’ relatives and assured that the government was working with local authorities to “protect, prevent and repair the damage from the floods.”
“Chaotic” situation
The governor of the state of Espírito Santo, Renato Casagrande, described a “chaotic situation” in the town of Mimoso do Sul, north of Rio, where the number of possible victims of bad weather could not be established . Aerial images taken on Saturday and released by firefighters show entire neighborhoods of the city under water, from which only the roofs of houses emerge. In other photos, published by local media, several vehicles, including a fire truck, are swept away by the current.
Rivers of water and mud also poured into the steep streets of Petropolis, where the situation was described as “critical” on Friday by the governor of the state of Rio, Claudio Castro, who declared the state emergency. Dozens of soldiers and firefighters, helped by dogs, worked on Saturday morning in pouring rain, AFP noted. Part of the town’s cemetery was washed away by water, an AFP team also saw in the town, where the risk of further landslides persists.
Some 90 people have been rescued since Friday and public schools have been converted into shelters, according to an emergency committee set up by the government and relief forces. Strong gusts of wind and intense rainfall also hit the coastline near Sao Paulo, where two children were injured and hospitalized on Friday.
A storm linked to extreme temperature changes
The storm is due to the arrival of a cold front which wreaked havoc mid-week in Rio Grande do Sul (south), then affected Sao Paulo and Rio, before reaching Espírito Santo, explained the meteorologists from the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet). Inmet’s forecasts had anticipated a “severe” storm, particularly in Rio, with precipitation of 200 mm of rain per day between Friday and Sunday.
This volume exceeds the historical average of 141.5 mm estimated for the entire month of March. The storm comes after a heatwave in the region, where a felt temperature of 62.3ºC was recorded on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. Meteorological services predict heavy rainfall in the mountains and north of Rio, after 300 mm fell in Petrópolis in 24 hours and more than 220 mm in the towns of Teresópolis and Magé.