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Nearly 70,000 people have been forced from their homes as deadly floods, landslides and torrential storms hit southern Brazil, the country's civil protection agency said Saturday, with the major city of Porto Alegre particularly badly hit.
Civil Defense said 58 people died, 74 were injured and 67 others were missing in the raging floodwaters.
The death toll does not include two people who died in the explosion at a flooded gas station in Porto Alegre, which was witnessed by an AFP journalist where rescuers were attempting to refuel.
Rapidly rising water levels in Rio Grande do Sul state were putting pressure on dams and particularly endangering Porto Alegre, an economically important city of 1.4 million.
The Guaiba River, which flows through the city, is at a historic height of 5.04 meters (16.5 ft), well above the 4.76 meters that had stood as a record since the devastating flood of 1941.
Authorities struggled to clear swampy areas as residents struggled to find their way to safety in the chaotic conditions.
In addition to forcing 69,200 residents from their homes, Civil Defense also said more than a million people were without access to drinking water due to the flooding, and described the damage as incalculable.
Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite said his state – typically one of Brazil's most prosperous – would need a “Marshall plan” of huge investment to rebuild after the disaster.
At many places, long queues formed as people tried to board buses, although bus services to and from the city center were cancelled.
Porto Alegre International Airport suspended all flights indefinitely on Friday.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva posted a video of a helicopter carrying a soldier gathering over a house, where he used a brick to punch a hole in the roof and rescue a child wrapped in a blanket.
In the northern Porto Alegre suburb, Jose Augusto Moraes, 61, panicked after rapidly rising floodwaters engulfed his home and he had to call firefighters to rescue a trapped child.
“I lost everything,” he told AFP.
'It's going to be very bad'
As water rose above the dam along the Gravataí, another local river, Mayor Sebastião Malo issued a stern warning on the social media platform X, saying, “Communities must evacuate!”
After shutting down four of the city's six treatment plants, he urged people to ration water.
In a live broadcast on Instagram, Governor Leight said the situation was “absolutely unprecedented”, the worst in the history of the state, home to agro-industrial production of soy, rice, wheat and corn.
As far as the eye can see, residential areas are submerged in water, roads have been destroyed and bridges have been washed away by the strong waves.
Rescue workers faced a huge task, as the entire city was inaccessible.
At least 300 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul have been damaged by the storm since Monday, according to local officials.
'Water up to my waist'
About a third of the displaced have been brought to shelters set up in sports centres, schools and other facilities.
“When I left the house, I was in water up to my waist,” an exhausted-looking Claudio Almiro, 55, told AFP at a cultural center converted into a shelter in a suburb north of Porto Alegre.
He said that while he had lost everything, “Many people lost their lives, so I raise my hands to heaven and thank God for being alive.”
The rains also hit the southern state of Santa Catarina, where one person died on Friday when his car was swept away by floodwaters in the municipality of Ipira.
Lula, who visited the area on Thursday, blamed climate change for the disaster.
Climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday that the devastating storms were the result of a “catastrophic cocktail” of global warming and the El Niño weather phenomenon.
South America's largest country has recently experienced several extreme weather events, including a cyclone in September that killed at least 31 people.
Aquino said that due to the region's geographical location it often faces the effects of colliding tropical and polar air masses – but these phenomena have been “intensified due to climate change.”