Rescuers and volunteers search for victims amid rubble and mud after a landslide triggered by heavy rains in the Paineiras neighborhood. Photo / Pablo Porciuncula, AFP
Rescuers and volunteers search for victims amid rubble and mud after a landslide triggered by heavy rains in the Paineiras neighborhood. Photo / Pablo Porciuncula, AFP
Despair hung over two cities in southeastern Brazil as rescuers and residents searched for 21 people missing after torrential rains unleashed flooding and landslides that killed at least 46.
A violent downpour on Monday (local time) in the state of Minas Gerais turned streets into raging rivers and led tolandslides that swept away houses and buried dozens of people.
The worst-hit city was Juiz de Fora, where 40 people were killed, while nearby Uba saw six deaths, according to the latest official tally from rescue services.
More heavy rain was forecast for Juiz de Fora this week and firefighters told AFP it was unlikely any more victims would be found alive.
“Our family is desperate,” Josiane Aparecida, a 43-year-old cook in Juiz de Fora, said.
A few blocks away, rescuers recovered the body of a man who, before he was killed, managed to pull his wife from their house which was engulfed by a landslide, firefighters told AFP.
‘It was chaos’
In the city of Uba, a two-hour drive away, residents were covered in mud as they cleared sludge from a river that had burst its banks.
Felippe Souza Lima, 30, the owner of a hardware store now surrounded by muddy water and debris, told AFP the gravity of the situation sank in when he saw two people paddling a canoe down the street on Monday night (local time).
“Our door was blown open, so it was chaos. We lost a lot of things, the water must have reached a metre and a half. But what matters is that everyone is okay, everyone is alive.”
He said the flooding of the Uba River was unprecedented in his lifetime.
“We’ve seen other similar floods, and the vast majority of them stopped at the riverbank.”
Torrential rains in southeastern Brazil caused flooding and landslides, leaving 46 dead and 21 missing. Photo / Getty Images
Elsewhere in the city, brand-new vehicles at a car dealership were stuck in mud as owner Mauro Pinto de Moraes Filho, 63, looked on in despair.
He told AFP he had suffered up to five million reais ($1.6m) in losses from water that reached 2m high.
“Everything is ruined. I am going to close the branch temporarily. After this disaster, it’s crazy to spend a huge amount of money to rebuild.”
The tragedy is the latest in a series of extreme weather disasters in Brazil, ranging from floods to fires and drought, many of which scientists have linked to the effects of global warming.
Juiz de Fora Mayor Margarida Salomao said the municipality had experienced its wettest February on record.
In 2024, more than 200 people died and two million were impacted by unprecedented flooding in southern Brazil, one of the worst natural disasters in its history.
Two years earlier, a deluge in the city of Petropolis outside Rio de Janeiro left 241 people dead.
