Brazil: Heavy rains put 138 towns in Minas Gerais state in distress

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A heavy rainstorm continued to lash the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in the southeast of the country, where at least 138 cities are in an emergency due to flooding, landslides, and damage to infrastructure.

Since the beginning of the rainy season, last October, until this Sunday, there have been at least six deaths and nearly 17,000 people evacuated from their homes due to the intense rainfall in the region, according to Civil Defense.

Brazilian authorities are also investigating the deaths of two other people this weekend, which are also believed to have occurred due to the storm.

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The latest fatality was a 42-year-old woman who died when a house collapsed in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second-most populous state with some 21.5 million inhabitants, behind only São Paulo.

Amid this strong storm in Minas Gerais, a serious accident took place on Saturday on Lake Furnas, when a substantial rocky wall of a canyon fell on four boats, leaving ten people dead and some thirty injured, most of them slightly.

However, the Civil Defense reported that the deaths from this tragedy were not included in the toll of victims of the rains until the conclusion of the investigations into the case.

Also, on Saturday, a dam of a mine belonging to the French company Vallourec overflowed Saturday in the town of Nova Lima. She caused the cutting of the highway connecting Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro and the evacuation of six area residents.

The incident also left one person injured who had to be hospitalized, although he is out of danger.

As a precaution, the National Mining Agency (ANM) ordered the stoppage of the mine’s activities due to the risk of collapse of the dam that overflowed.

The state of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil, also suffered heavy rains between November and December that caused at least 24 deaths, left dozens of cities underwater, and forced nearly 100,000 people to abandon their homes.