Flooding and mudslides killed at least 102 people in south-eastern Brazil, authorities said, as the most intense rains in half a century paralysed the Rio de Janeiro area and brought scenes of fear and chaos.
Fire and rescue officials said most of the deaths occurred in hillside slums where heavy rains since Monday triggered devastating mudslides.
Officials said 37 people were killed in Rio, but hardest hit was Niteroi, a city on the other side of the bay from Rio, where 53 people died.
Flooding was so intense that authorities urged Rio residents to remain indoors and not venture downtown, where streets were impassable.
Some motorists abandoned their partially submerged cars, while others were stranded for hours inside stalled vehicles.
“All the major streets of the city are closed because of the floods,” said Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes. “Each and every person who attempts to enter them will be at enormous risk.”
Civil defence officials said most of the casualties were trapped in landslides in the hillside slums that ring Rio, a city of 16-million people that will host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Paes ordered schools closed on Wednesday for a second day in order to keep people off the streets. Separately, Governor Cabral decreed three days of mourning.
Flooding also wreaked havoc with air traffic, causing serious airport delays.
The Santos Dumont airport, which handles cargo flights, closed late on Monday but reopened on Tuesday. However, at Rio’s Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport, most flights on Tuesday were delayed and several domestic flights were cancelled.
In a neighbourhood close to the mountain where Rio’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue is located, the local weather service said that rainfall was recorded as twice the amount normally registered for the whole month of April.
Administrative malfeasance
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticised decades of administrative malfeasance, which allowed shoddy home construction in high-risk zones of the city’s shantytowns.
The Brazilian leader was in Rio for ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a new health centre, but the event was cancelled by the rain, which made it nearly impossible to travel from one part of the city to another.
The heavy rain began during Monday’s evening rush hour, catching workers heading home for the day off-guard.
After a brief afternoon lull on Tuesday, rain again intensified after sunset, and officials warned that flooding could worsen on Wednesday.
The heavy rains in Rio followed deluges in São Paulo earlier this year after the wettest summer in the region in more than six decades, officials said.
Those killer rainstorms across São Paulo state claimed dozens of lives.
Inmet, the national weather service which has kept rainfall records since 1917, said that the Tuesday rainfall was the heaviest in the last 48 years. — AFP