At Least 4 Killed as Storm Batters Brazil with Heavy Rain

At least four people were killed and nine are missing, the authorities said, The New York Times reported.

The storm also prompted a helicopter search and rescue for victims wading in flooded neighborhoods.

The storm system that struck the country was an extra-tropical cyclone. Such storms have cold air at their core and are typically associated with cold fronts, meteorologists with the National Weather Service said.

Governor Eduardo Leite of Rio Grande do Sul said on Twitter that officials’ main priority on Friday was “to find the missing and save people who may still be stranded by the floods”.

The four confirmed victims were all men: a 23-year-old and a 27-year-old in Sao Leopoldo; a 69-year-old in Maquine; and a 60-year-old in Novo Hamburgo.

In Maquine, a municipality on the eastern coast and one of the areas hardest hit by the storm, dozens of residents forced out of their homes trekked to shelters for food and dry clothes, the government of Rio Grande do Sul said. The authorities there issued a warning for a risk of landslides.

As at Friday night, Maquine had received nearly 30cm of rain in one day, damaging rural properties and homes, the authorities said in a news release. Two family members of the man who died in the city were still missing, they added.

On some streets in Maquine, the flooding was so severe that “part of the asphalt had eroded”, said the authorities.

The rain was also threatening the area’s agriculture, the backbone of Maquine’s economy.

As at Friday night, one property in the city had suffered a total loss of its lettuce production, officials said.

More than 1,700 people in the state were seeking shelter after the storm, said the authorities.

Videos from the government showed a rescuer in a wetsuit pulling a man and a dog up into a helicopter as tawny flood waters swirled below. Photos showed firefighters trudging through swamped, purple graffiti-covered streets as they carried a person in a wheelchair.

The wheels of the firefighters’ vehicle were half submerged.

Firefighters also rescued patients from a flooded healthcare centre in Sapiranga, a city about 120km west of Maquine. In a photo of that rescue, a man is shown lying on a boat inside the healthcare centre.

Brazil has experienced deadly storms in the recent past.

In 2021, at least 20 people were killed after calamitous floods swept through north-eastern Brazil.

In 2020, heavy rains in south-eastern Brazil killed at least 47 people and forced more than 18,000 from their homes.

A powerful summer storm in Rio de Janeiro in 2019 killed at least six people as streets turned into rivers and mudslides destroyed homes and buried a bus, where two of the dead were found.

In 2022, powerful mudslides and flooding swept through a mountainous region north of Rio de Janeiro, dumping a month’s worth of rain overnight and killing at least 94 people.

Flooding is a complex phenomenon with many causes, including land development and ground conditions.

While linking climate change to a single flood event requires extensive scientific analysis, climate change, which is already causing heavier rainfall in many storms, is an increasingly important part of the mix.

Warmer atmosphere holds and releases more water, whether in the form of rain or heavy winter snowpack.