The death toll from flooding caused by heavy rains in southern Brazil has risen to at least 78, authorities said Sunday, with another 115,000 people forced from their homes and 105 still missing.
President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Rio Grande do Sul state yesterday morning, accompanied by several members of his government, to discuss search and rescue operations and reconstruction. “Bureaucracy will not stand in our way, it will not prevent us from restoring the greatness of the state,” the president promised during a press conference.
The state is a “war zone”, “it is a war scenario and we will need post-war measures”, said the governor of the state Eduardo Leite, calling for a “Marshall plan”.
Over 3,000 military, firefighters and rescue crew members, as well as volunteers, in boats, jet skis and even swimming, continue the race against time to save survivors. In the state capital Porto Alegre, Fabianu Saldaña said he and three friends, using jet skis, rescued 50 people over the weekend. “The only thing we heard when we went down every street was ‘help, help!'” he recounted.
The number of missing people rose from 70 the day before yesterday to 105 yesterday, according to Civil Protection, which added that it was conducting an investigation to determine whether four other deaths were related to the wave of bad weather.
Nearly two-thirds of the nearly 500 towns in the state, which borders Uruguay and Argentina, have been hit by floods and landslides, and some communities have been completely submerged. Parts of the road network and bridges were destroyed, while a small hydroelectric dam in the state partially collapsed.
More than 400,000 people were still without power yesterday afternoon while nearly a third of the state’s population (11 million) was without drinking water, according to authorities in Rio Grande do Sul.
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