At least 78 people have died in floods and landslides caused by the worst rains in nearly a century in the tourist town of Petropolis, near Rio de Janeiro.

The toll, which is provisional, has steadily increased hour by hour in the aftermath of torrential rains which have transformed the streets of the center into rivers of mud, flattened houses and overturned dozens of cars in this winter season. particularly deadly rains in Brazil.

"We now have 78 confirmed dead and 21 people have been rescued," Rio de Janeiro state governor Claudio Castro said Wednesday, February 16, at a press conference, referring to "the worst rains since 1932".

Global warming

The balance sheet is likely to increase, the number of missing in the locality of 300,000 inhabitants located 60 km north of Rio, in the south-east of Brazil, not having yet been established.

The picturesque city received more rain in a few hours on Tuesday evening than the average for an entire month of February, according to the meteorological agency MetSul. 

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

With global 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 in the 19th century.

The most affected neighborhood 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.

three days of mourning

The mud buried houses and torn sheet metal roofs littered the ground everywhere.

Cars, swept away by rivers of mud, found themselves with their wheels in the air or piled up on other vehicles.

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

On Wednesday almost all the shops in the city center were closed, with the exception of pharmacies.

Severe bouts of rain threatened the region again before the end of the week, according to meteorology.

The town hall of Petropolis decreed a "state of calamity" and a three-day mourning was decreed.

With AFP

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