Hundreds of Rio Grande do Sul towns under water

UN humanitarians said that unprecedented floods and landslides have impacted over two million people in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul where almost every city has been hit. A staggering “93 percent of the cities and towns” have been impacted, according to the UNHCR.

In Geneva, UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler explained the floods have become the biggest climate-related disaster in southern Brazil. More than 65,000 of those uprooted by the emergency are still sheltering in improvised centers.

This month’s flood is the fourth that the Rio Grande do Sul has suffered in a year. Since 2000, flood-related disasters across the world have increased by 134 percent compared with the two previous decades, according to the WMO 2021 report.