A strong explosion at a gas station left at least two dead this Saturday in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegrehit by unprecedented floods, a journalist from the AFP present at the time of the explosion.
The incident occurred when vehicles working to rescue victims of the climate disaster were refueling at the flooded service station.
A fire resulting from the explosion generated a thick cloud of smokevisible from afar.
Firefighters transported the victims of the accident, affected with burns.
The gas station is located on Cairu Avenue, in the Navegantes neighborhood of Porto Alegre, one of the largest cities in southern Brazil.
The city with a population of almost 1.4 million has been hit since Friday by the “worst climate disaster” in the history of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The heavy rains left so far at least 57 dead and 67 missing in the region.
The overflowing of water channels and landslides keep numerous roads interrupted, with almost 300 towns affected, many of them isolated.
In Porto Alegre, the rapid rise in the last hours of the Guaíba River flooded the historic center.
According to the mayor’s office, its level was 5.04 meters, above the record of 4.76 meters, recorded when the city suffered historic floods in 1941.
Numerous streets woke up under water and residents tried to evacuate their homes, the news agencies confirmed AFP. In the Navegantes neighborhood, a man asked the firefighters for help to rescue a child who was trapped in his house, because a leg problem prevented him from taking him with him. “Suddenly, in a matter of minutes, in less than an hour, everything flooded. “I lost everything, television, wardrobe, bed, everything,” the 61-year-old shopkeeper said anguishedly to the AFP.
The governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, said on Saturday in a live broadcast on Instagram that this was a “dramatic” and “absolutely unprecedented” situation.
The mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastiao Melo, reported that “despite the great containment effort”, A dam on another river that flows through the city, the Gravataí, began to overflow. “The communities must leave the place,” he wrote on the X platform.
The Porto Alegre international airport suspended its operations on Friday night for an indefinite period.
Porto Alegre is the capital of one of the most thriving states in the country, with the fifth GDP of the largest Latin American economy and essentially agricultural production, with large crops of soy, rice, wheat and corn.
In the state, rescue brigades are trying to reach and supply numerous isolated municipalities, without communications and with blocked roads, and even without electricity or water.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva published a video of members of the armed forces rescuing a baby from a helicopter. In the images, an agent can be seen hitting the roof of a house with a brick in order to remove the creature, wrapped in a blanket.
“Despite the unfavorable weather conditions, rescue actions are carried out day and night”said the federal government.
Civil Defense reported that On Saturday, there were 74 injured and 24,600 evacuated.
Authorities are working to set up shelters in sports centers and other facilities, which so far have received more than 8,200 people throughout the state.
Aerial images of the area show enormous surfaces completely flooded, roads and bridges washed away, and rescues of people on roofs with helicopters, accounting for the “worst disaster” in the history of the state, according to Leite.
The forecast anticipates rains of “very high severity” until Sunday that will further load the rivers and may cause large landslides, Civil Defense said on Friday.
The rains impact the southern also state of Santa Catarinawhere the death of a man was recorded on Friday when his car was swept away by the current in the municipality of Ipira.
The “disastrous cocktail” of climate change and the El Niño meteorological phenomenon favored the devastating rains that hit the south of Brazil and other extreme events, he assured the AFP Brazilian climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino.
The state of Rio Grande do Sul suffered several extreme weather events last year; the most serious, the passage of a cyclone in September that left more than 30 dead.
(With information from AFP)
