At least 361 injured and 131 missing in southern part of country from what governor called his state’s ‘biggest climate catastrophe’

The death toll from what authorities call the worst climate disaster ever to strike southern Brazil has risen to 90, after ferocious rain flooded huge stretches of Rio Grande do Sul state, displacing more than 155,000 people and forcing the closure of the main airport in the country’s fifth biggest city.

Photographs of the Porto Alegre airport, one of Brazil’s busiest, showed its main terminal had been completely inundated and a cargo plane parked in an expanse of water next to a pair of semi-submerged boarding stairs.

Hundreds of cities across Rio Grande so Sul hit by floods with thousands displaced and infrastructure destroyed

The death toll from rains in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul has risen to 57, local authorities said on Saturday afternoon, while dozens still have not been accounted for.

The state’s civil defence authority said 67 people were still missing and more than 69,000 had been displaced as storms affected nearly two-thirds of the 497 cities in the state.

More than 23,000 people forced to leave homes after heavy rains in southern Rio Grande do Sul prompt record-breaking floods

Heavy rains in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul have killed 37 people, with another 74 still missing, as record-breaking floods devastated cities and forced thousands to leave their homes.

It was the fourth such environmental disaster in a year, following floods in July, September and November that killed 75 people in total.