Rio de Janeiro, April 07: The heaviest rains in Rio de Janeiro’s history has triggered landslides that killed at least 81 people as rising water turned roads into rivers and paralysed Brazil’s second-largest city.
The ground gave way in steep hillside slums, cutting red-brown paths of destruction through shantytowns.
Concrete and wooden homes were crushed and hurtled downhill, only to bury other structures.
The future host city of the Olympics and football World Cup ground to a near halt as Mayor Eduardo Paes urged workers to stay home and closed all schools.
Most businesses were shuttered.
29 centimeters of rain fell in less than 24 hours, and more rain was expected.
Officials said potential mudslides threatened at least 2,000 homes in the city of 6 million people.
“It is not advisable for people to leave their homes. We want to preserve lives,” Paes said on Tuesday.
He told the Web site of the newspaper O Globo that the rainfall was the most that Rio had ever recorded in such a short period.
The previous high was 24 centimeters that fell on 2nd January, 1966.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged Brazilians to pray for the rain to stop.
“This is the greatest flooding in the history of Rio de Janeiro, the biggest amount of rain in a single day,” Silva told reporters in Rio.
—Agencies