Porto Alegre: About 70,000 people were forced from their homes by severe flooding, landslides and strong storms in southern Brazil, with the main city of Porto Alegre suffering heavy damage.
Civil defense reported 57 dead, 74 injured and 67 missing in flash floods.
The charges did not include two people killed in an explosion at a flooded gas station in Porto Alegre, as rescue teams tried to refuel, an AFP reporter witnessed.
Rapidly rising waters in the state of Rio Grande do Sul are causing dams and threatening the economically important city of Porto Alegre of 1.4 million.
The Guaiba River, which flows through the city, is at a historic height of 5.04 meters (16.5 ft), higher than the record of 4.76 meters since the 1941 flood.
Swamp areas are being evacuated as residents struggle to find safe passage in the chaos.
In addition to 69,200 residents who were forced from their homes, the civil defense said more than a million people did not have access to drinking water in the flood, and said the damage was irreparable.
Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite said a “Marshall Plan” was needed to rebuild after the disaster in what used to be one of Brazil’s most prosperous states.
In many places, long lines formed as people tried to board buses, but bus services to and from the city center were cancelled.
Porto Alegre International Airport suspended all flights indefinitely on Friday.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva posted a video of a helicopter landing a soldier on top of a house, where he used bricks to punch a hole in the roof and rescue a child covered with a blanket.
In the northern city of Porto Alegre, Jose Augusto Moraes, 61, was shaken after the fast-moving flood engulfed his house and he was forced to call firefighters to save the trapped child.
“I lost everything,” he told AFP.
