Australia, Brazil brace for more rains, destruction
Abnormal amount of rains and floodings of "Bibilical proportion" triggered by the La Niña phenomenon continued to bring destruction and miseries in Australia and Brazil on Sunday, claiming the lives of thousands of people and tens of thousands more without homes.
Dozens of towns in Australia prepare for the worst as the flood crisis shifted to the south and water levels in rivers in the southern Victoria state reached unprecedented levels. An estimated 14,000 homes in the state were waterlogged and 3,500 families were evacuated.
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In Victoria, the second most populous state in Australia, people were treading at waist-high floodwaters, which destroyed fences and felled trees littered the roads.
"It's shocking, devastating, heart-wrenching," said Peter Gretgrix, a resident of Charlton. "It's just total devastation, some of the shops in the low area are just a mess, windows smashed out, it's terrible. I've never seen anything like it, (and) I'm 57."
In Brazil, people there turned to prayers to for the hundreds of people that were killed from the flooding and mudslides and ask for Divine intervention to save them from further onslaughts. Government figures place to 610 the number of people to have been killed from the natural disaster. The figure is expected to rise considerably.
Emergency workers sent to disaster zone to help in the rescue and retrieval of bodies at the Serrana region, just north of Rio de Janeiro, were shocked by the body count. The government has to send in refrigerator trucks to store corpses and prevent diseases from spreading.
As rescue workers reached outlying villages, they fear the number of deaths could exceed more than 1,000 as areas previously inaccessible are just being visited.
Australia admitted being overwhelmed by the once-in-a century flooding. Many Australians have never experienced a flooding in such magnitude.
Government troopers were called in to assist affected families to flee their homes, while soldiers were also tasked to sandbag a number of towns in a desperate attempt to save them from the destructions.
"We are facing an unprecedented flood event on the Campaspe river," said Lachlan Quick, an emergency services spokesperson. "Water volumes of this size have never been seen down this river before."