Despair hung over two cities in southeastern Brazil on Wednesday as rescuers and residents searched for 27 people missing after torrential rains unleashed flooding and landslides that killed at least 40.
A violent downpour on Monday in the state of Minas Gerais turned streets into raging rivers and led to landslides that swept away houses and buried dozens of people.
The worst-hit city was Juiz da Fora, where 34 people were killed, while nearby Uba saw six deaths, according to the latest official tally from rescue services.
More heavy rain was forecast for Juiz de Fora this week, and firefighters told AFP it was unlikely any more victims would be found alive.
“Our family is desperate,” said Josiane Aparecida, a 43-year-old cook in Juiz de Fora.
Her aunt died in a landslide and her cousin was found alive but died at a hospital.
Aparecida was still looking for her cousin’s two children, ages six and nine, and boyfriend.
“We have hope, and yet we don’t, because it’s so difficult (to find them), and we’ve already lost two,” she said.
A few blocks away, rescuers recovered the body of a man who, before he was killed, managed to pull his wife from their house which was engulfed by a landslide, firefighters told AFP.
– ‘It was chaos’ –
In the city of Uba, a two-hour drive away, residents were covered in mud as they cleared sludge from a river that had burst its banks.
Felippe Souza Lima, 30, owner of a hardware store now surrounded by muddy water and debris, told AFP the gravity of the situation sank in when he saw two people floating past on a canoe on Monday night.
“Our door was blown open, so it was chaos. We lost a lot of things, the water must have reached a meter and a half. But what matters is that everyone is okay, everyone is alive.”
He said the flooding of the Uba River was unprecedented in his lifetime.
“We’ve seen other similar floods, and the vast majority of them stopped at the riverbank.”
Elsewhere in the city, brand-new vehicles at a car dealership were stuck in mud as owner Mauro Pinto de Moraes Filho, 63, looked on in despair.
He told AFP he had suffered up to five million reais (almost $1 million) in losses from water that reached two meters high.
“Everything is ruined. I am going to close the branch temporarily. After this disaster, it’s crazy to spend a huge amount of money to rebuild.”
The tragedy is the latest in a series of extreme weather disasters in Brazil, from floods to fires and drought, many of which scientists have linked to the effects of global warming.
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 unprecedented flooding in southern Brazil, one of the worst natural disasters in its history.
Two years earlier, a deluge in the city of Petropolis outside Rio de Janeiro left 241 people dead.
