Brasilia:

Record floods that killed over 170 people and displaced half a million in southern Brazil are a warning sign of more disasters to come throughout the Americas because of climate change, an official at the United Nations’ refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Roughly 389,000 people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul remain displaced from their homes because of the intense rain and flooding, which local officials say was the worst disaster in the region’s history. Scientists say climate change made the flooding twice as likely to happen.

Andrew Harper, special advisor on climate action to the refugee agency UNHCR, visited a flooded neighborhood in state capital Porto Alegre over the weekend and called it “a ghost town.”

“It was underwater for almost 40 days. There wasn’t even any rats running around. Everything had died,” Harper said in an interview on Tuesday.

Even after the flood waters subsided, residents have not returned to the neighborhood where streets are piled high with water-logged garbage and debris. Many are still living in shelters, including Venezuelan refugees who had resettled in Porto Alegre.

UNHCR is helping the local government to build temporary housing.

Residents of some hard hit areas may never return, having been forced to move by repeated flooding, Harper said. But how many would become so-called climate migrants will only be known years after the disaster.

The floods surpassed all expectations that local authorities had for climate disasters, and governments need to do more to prepare for these events, Harper said.

“We’re seeing the emergence in Brazil of what we may be seeing throughout the Americas. So to ignore this, they do it at their own peril,” Harper said.

Governments need to understand where the people most vulnerable to climate change live, like the neighborhood he visited in Porto Alegre, and include those people in their climate plans, he said.

“It’s a warning signal, but we’ve been seeing warning signals now for five, ten years,” Harper added. “At what point do you basically have to slap somebody in the face and say, ‘Wake up, you’re not going to ignore this.'”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Sao Paulo:

At least 100 people have died and nearly 100,000 homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged from more than a week of record rainfall and flooding in south Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, local authorities have said.

The National Confederation of Municipalities said in an update on Wednesday that overflowing rivers and floods in the state have affected around 1.45 million people and forced some 200,000 residents to flee their homes, Xinhua news agency reported.

Based on data from the Civil Defense agency, some 99,800 residences of all types have sustained either total or partial damage since the state’s worst weather-related disaster hit on April 29, according to the confederation.

As many as 414 of 497 towns in the state, a top agricultural and livestock producer that borders Argentina and Uruguay, have suffered from the storms and declared emergencies.

The confederation estimates the economic losses at 4.6 billion reals (about $904 million), taking into account the damage to housing and public infrastructure, as well as agriculture, livestock, industry, commerce and services.

In just one week, Rio Grande do Sul saw five months’ worth of rain, sparking unprecedented flooding.

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Braslia:

The death count from devastating floods that have ravaged southern Brazil for days reached 100 on Wednesday, according to the civil defense force that handles disaster relief.

Nearly 400 municipalities have been affected by the worst natural calamity ever to hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul, with hundreds of people injured, 128 still missing and 160,000 forced from their homes.

Search and rescue teams were on Wednesday evacuating people trapped in their homes in the state capital of Porto Alegre and other cities and towns.

Authorities, meanwhile, urged people not to return to affected areas due to possible landslide and health hazards.

“Contaminated water can transmit diseases,” civil defense spokeswoman Sabrina Ribas said.

The National Confederation of Municipalities said nearly 100,000 homes had been damaged or destroyed by unprecedented rains and floods in the state, with losses estimated at about 4.6 billion reais (more than $900 million.)

Porto Alegre is home to some 1.4 million people and the larger metropolitan area has more than double that number.

The state’s Guaiba River, which runs through Porto Alegre, reached historic levels and officials warned Tuesday that five dams were at risk of rupturing.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)