More rain lashes southeast Brazil as death toll hits 55

This aerial view shows rescue teams searching for victims amid the debris after a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Barrio Parque Jardim Burnier neighbourhood in Juiz de Fora, inland from Rio de Janeiro. Photo / Pablo Porciuncula, AFP

Fresh downpours have brought more flooding, landslides and fear to southeastern Brazil, where rescuers were still looking for 13 missing people after a rainstorm that left 55 people dead.

More than 5000 people have been forced to flee their homes since a deluge late on Monday caused landslides that buried dozens of people and unleashed flooding in the cities of Juiz de Fora and Uba.

On Wednesday night, residents received yet another alert on their cellphones as rain lashed the region.

“It rained a lot, the riverbank collapsed even further, and civil defence called us to evacuate,” Luiz Otavio Souza, a 35-year-old salesman who had to leave his home and whose nephew is missing, told AFP.

“Everyone is panicking, friends and relatives are asking how we are, it’s like a horror movie,” said the resident of Parque Burnier, one of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods in Juiz de Fora, where a wall of mud buried multiple houses on Monday night.

In the Tres Moinhos neighbourhood, three houses were buried by landslides early on Thursday after their residents were evacuated, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

Several residents who had to abandon their homes returned to retrieve furniture, appliances, mattresses, and pets they had left behind.

The governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, denied accusations that his government had reduced investments in protection against such natural disasters.

His comments on X came after the television programme Jornal Nacional reported that the state government had cut spending to prevent such disasters by 95% over the past three years.

This week’s disaster is the latest in a series of extreme weather events in Brazil, from floods to fires and drought, many of which scientists have linked to the effects of global warming.

Brazilian meteorologist Carlos Nobre attributed the unusually heavy downpours to a passing cold front over the “very warm” Atlantic Ocean.

He told AFP this caused a lot of water evaporation and the formation of cumulonimbus clouds “which cause these enormous downpours”.

“All these extreme phenomena are associated with the fact that global warming brings more energy into the atmosphere.”

The mayor of Juiz de Fora, 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 flooding in southern Brazil.

- Agence France-Presse