Brazil: at least 44 dead after heavy rains in Petropolis

Europe 1 with AFP 5:41 p.m., February 16, 2022

At least 44 people have died following heavy rains that caused landslides and floods in the Brazilian tourist city of Petropolis, the governorate of the state of Rio de Janeiro announced on Wednesday.

"So far, 44 dead have been confirmed, 21 people have been saved," said the governorate in a mid-day statement, referring to "almost a war situation", with a strong mobilization of relief, but without specifying the number of missing in the locality located 60 km from Rio (south-east).

Particularly severe rains this season

The last provisional official report Tuesday evening reported 18 deaths in the picturesque city which received in a few hours more rain than the average for a whole month of February, according to the meteorological agency MetSul.

Brazil has been hit in this rainy season by particularly severe rainfall - also in the states of Bahia (northeast), Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo (southeast) - which experts have linked to global warming.

With warming, the risk of heavy rainfall events increases, according to scientists.

These rains, associated in particular in Brazil with an often wild urbanization, favor floods and deadly landslides.

More than 180 firefighters were in Petropolis, along with some 400 military personnel, scouring the muddy earth in this mountain town that was the summer residence of the former imperial court fleeing Rio's heatwave.

Specialized search and rescue teams have been sent to reinforce relief operations, with the support of 4x4 vehicles and boats in the city devastated by torrents of mud.

The most affected place is Alto da Serra, a hill that many families descended on Wednesday crying, carrying the meager belongings they were able to save, AFP journalists noted.

"A war scenario", laments a resident

"All the people on the street say it's a war scenario," said Wendel Pio Lourenço, a 24-year-old resident who has been involved in the rescue since the day before.

"I found a little girl engulfed in the mud", says the young man, who carries a television set towards a church serving as a refuge.

Mud engulfed homes and torn tin roofs littered the ground.

A large flow of water still flowed from the hills.

Many cars were violently swept away by rivers of mud.

Shops were inundated by the water which rushed down the streets of the historic center of Petropolis.

A three-day mourning decreed

The Church of Saint-Antoine, near the most affected area, has opened its doors to some 150 residents who have abandoned houses that have already been destroyed or are in danger of collapsing.

"Most of those who arrive here have lost relatives. It's a difficult situation," Father Celestino, the parish priest, told AFP.

The town hall of Petropolis, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, declared a "state of calamity" on Tuesday evening and the governor of the state, Claudio Castro, went there.

A three-day mourning was decreed.

From Moscow where he is visiting and before going to Petropolis on Friday, President Jair Bolsonaro thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "for his wishes of solidarity with the population" and wished that "God comforts" those who have been bereaved by "this disaster".

The rains have ended but more rains were expected and, meanwhile, fog blanketed the stricken locality on Wednesday.

Petropolis has become a destination that attracts a large number of tourists in search of history, hiking in green nature and a temperate, even cool climate.

Austrian writer Stefan Zweig took refuge there to escape the Nazi regime and ended his life there in 1942. In January 2011, more than 900 people died due to heavy rains causing floods and landslides in a vast region near Rio including Petropolis and the neighboring towns of Nova Friburgo, Itaipava and Teresopolis.