PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, May 5, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Nearly 70,000 people have been forced from their homes amid deadly flooding, mudslides and torrential storms in southern Brazil, with the major city of Porto Alegre particularly hard-hit, the country's civil defense agency said Saturday. Fast-rising water levels in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were straining dams and particularly threatening economically important Porto Alegre, a city of 1.4 million. The Porto Alegre international airport suspended all flights on Friday for an undetermined period. "I lost everything," he told AFP. The devastating storms were the result of a "disastrous cocktail" of global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday.
