Death toll hits 90 in southern Brazil's worst climate disaster

The death toll from what authorities are calling 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.

- Tom Phillips

Photographs of Porto Alegre airport one of Brazil's busiest showed a cargo plane parked in an expanse of water next to a pair of semi-submerged boarding stairs.

At least 361 people have been injured and 131 are missing as a result of what state governor Eduardo Leite called Rio Grande do Sul's "biggest ever climate catastrophe". More than 48,000 people are living in dozens of shelters. "The state is facing a warlike situation," Leite told reporters on Sunday as the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, flew to the region to oversee rescue efforts. "This is one of those events that will go down in history," added Leite, who has declared a state of emergency in 397 of his state's 497 towns and cities.

One of the worst-affected cities is the state capital, Porto Alegre, which sits along the Guaíba river. The waterway hit a record level of 5.33 meters on Sunday morning - even higher than during the 1941 floods when it rained for more than 20 days straight.

"Porto Alegre has been devastated, leaving virtually the whole city without its supply of water, electricity and food," the newspaper O Globo reported yesterday, describing "a situation of unprecedented sorrow" in the flooded city of 1.4 million inhabitants.