Authorities said a winter storm made landfall in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, accompanied by torrential rain on Friday, leaving four people dead, nine missing and forcing a direct deployment. Promote search and rescue of wading victims in flooded residential areas.
The storm system that hit the country was an extratropical storm. Such storms have cold air at their cores and are often associated with cold fronts, National Weather Service meteorologists say.
Governor Eduardo Leite of Rio Grande do Sul said on Twitter that officials’ main priority on Friday was “finding those who are missing and rescuing those who may still be trapped by the flooding.”
The four confirmed victims are all men: a 23-year-old and a 27-year-old from São Leopoldo; a 69-year-old from Maquiné; and a 60-year-old from Novo Hamburgo.
In Maquiné, a municipality on the east coast and one of the hardest hit by the storm, dozens of residents were forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in search of food and clothing. dry, the Rio Grande do Sul government said. Authorities there have issued warnings about the risk of landslides.
Authorities said that as of Friday night, Maquiné had suffered nearly a foot of rain in a single day, damaging property and homes in the countryside. New information posted. Two family members of the man who died in the city are still missing.
Authorities said on some streets in Maquiné the flooding was so severe that “part of the asphalt has been eroded”. Rain also threatens the region’s agriculture, the backbone of the Maquiné economy. Officials said that as of Friday night, one property in the city had completely lost its lettuce production.
In total, more than 1,700 people in the state are seeking shelter after the storm, authorities said.
Government videos show a lifeguard in a wet suit pulling a man and a dog onto a helicopter as purple floodwater swirls below. The photos show firefighters trudging through flooded streets, covered in purple graffiti as they carry a person in a wheelchair.
The wheel of the fire truck was half submerged.
Firefighters also rescued patients from a flooded healthcare center in Sapiranga, a city about 75 miles west of Maquiné. in one Photo During that rescue, a man is believed to be lying on a boat inside the wellness center.
A powerful summer storm in Rio de Janeiro In 2019, at least six people were killed when streets turned into rivers and landslides destroyed homes and buried a bus, where two of the dead were found.
Last year, strong landslides and floods swept through a mountainous region north of Rio de Janeiro, sending rain for a month overnight and killing at least 94 people.
Flooding is a complex phenomenon caused by many factors, including land development and ground conditions.
While linking climate change to a single flood event requires extensive scientific analysis, climate change, which already causes greater rainfall in multiple storms, is an increasingly importance of association. The warmer atmosphere traps and releases more water, whether in the form of rain or heavy winter snow.
