Death toll from floods in Brazil hits 113 as rain returns

Rains returned to Rio Grande do Sul on Friday as the death toll from historic floods in Brazil’s southernmost state reached 113, with 146 people still unaccounted for, local authorities said.

The heavy rainfall, linked to this year’s strong El Niño current meeting other weather fronts caused several rivers and lakes in the region to reach their highest levels everand burst their banks.

Floods inundated downtown Porto Alegre, the state capital, and turned streets into rivers in outlying cities, displacing over 300,000 people from their stricken homes.

Rain began again after a one-day hiatus that allowed the level of Porto Alegre’s Guaiba river to fall below a record 5-meters and weather forecaster Met Sul said the rainfall should persist until Monday, with a “high risk of storms” over the weekend.

The volume of rain exceeded 400 mm (15.75 inches) in the first five days of May in Rio Grande do Sul, well above the average of between 140 and 180 mm for the whole month, the National Meteorological Institute said.

In Canoas, one of most affected cities near Porto Alegre, over 6,000 people were staying in a college gymnasium turned into shelter.

Aparecida de Fatima Fagundes said she had been struggling to sleep there as she could not stop thinking about “the worst day” of her life.

“I keep remembering people saying ‘help’, ‘help’,” she said. “It was horrible.”

The state government said more than 385,000 people had no water services andsome 20 cities were out of telecom services.

On Thursday, the federal government announced a package of aid measures to help Rio Grande do Sul, which included bringing forward payment of social benefits and providing cheaper credit to farmers and companies.

Governor Eduardo Leite said earlier this week that initial calculations indicate that Rio Grande do Sul would need at least 19 billion reais ($3.68 billion) to rebuild from the damage, which has extended into farm areas around the capital.

The severe flooding is expected to cause farmers to lose about 3 million metric tons of soybeans, according to agribusiness consultancy StoneX. The port of Rio Grande, where grains are exported, was operating normally although access by road and rail was disrupted earlier this week.