Floods in Brazil
218,000 people across a swath of northern Brazil three times the size of Alaska have fled the worst rainfall and flooding in decades, braving newly formed rivers teeming with anacondas, alligators and legless reptiles known as “worm lizards” whose bite is excruciating. Already, 36 people have been killed in the flooding, sparked by unusually heavy rains that have been falling for two months on 10 of Brazil’s 26 states. Alligators swam through the city of Santarem, civil defence official Walkiria Coelho said. Scorpions congregated on the same high ground as people escaping the rising water. No injuries were reported. Rivers were still rising as much as 30cm a day in Maranhao. The mighty Rio Negro River that feeds the Amazon was just one metre below a record set in 1953 near the jungle city of Manaus, and experts said the record could be broken by June. In the jungle city of Altamira, more rain fell in three hours than normally falls in two months.