Brazil: Heavy Rains Affect Thousands of People in Amazon States

On Saturday, the civil defense confirmed that the rains have severely hit the states of Tocantins, Rondonia, Amazonas, Para and Acre, where thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in the last week.

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Between Thursday and Saturday, Rio Branco, the capital of the Acre state, registered 203 millimeters of rain, a volume which is over 75 percent of what meteorologists expected in the entire month of March.

This caused the overflow of the rivers that cross the city. Some 2,500 people had to be evacuated. So far, however, it is not known if there are people injured or missing.

In Maraba, in the Para state, 1,800 people also had to leave their homes. In Rondonia, the rivers flooded villages located in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous reserve.

The tweet reads, "Heavy rains put the states of Amazonas, Acre, Para, Maranhao on alert on Saturday. The country's northern states have been experiencing storms in recent days. On Friday, the National Institute of Meteorology issued a warning about the danger of heavy rain."

So far this year, Brazil has been hit hard by extreme events associated with global climate change. The effects in areas where low-income people live have been notorious and tragic.

Two weeks ago, a landslide also caused by another rainstorm caused eight deaths in the city of Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas. Among the victims were four children.

This tragedy occurred less than a month after another storm registered on the coast of the state of Sao Paulo, where another 65 deaths died.