Extreme weather: rains close to three times the average in the last five days in Minas Gerais, Brazil, causing 53 dead, one person missing, 65 injured and leaving more than 4 thousand homeless and more than 28 thousand displaced from their homes

The number of deaths due to the rains in Minas Gerais in the last few days has reached 53. Since October 2019, 64 people have died in Minas Gerais in rains that behave as extreme weather events. Until then, the highest number of deaths had been 18, in the 2016/2017 and 2018/2019 rainy seasons.

According to the G1 website, the latest balance released by the State Civil Defense of Minas Gerais, published on Tuesday (28), 28,893 people are displaced and another 4,397 have lost their homes due to intense rains. More than 100 cities have already ruled out an emergency situation.

Videos of scary rain scenes in Belo Horizonte have taken over social media in Brazil in the last hours.

List of videos:

video 1;

video 2;

video 3;

video 4.

Rains kill 50 people in Minas Gerais and leave more than 28 thousand displaced and 4 thousand homeless

According to the newspaper O Tempo, fifty people died in Minas Gerais due to the heavy rains that hit the state last week. Two other people are still missing in the cities of Conselheiro Lafaiete, in the central region of the state, and Luisburgo, in the region of Zona da Mata. According to authorities, the death toll could rise in the coming hours. In all, 28,043 people are displaced in Minas Gerais. Of these, about four thousand are homeless in the region due to heavy rains.

For the general coordinator of Research and Development of the National Center for Monitoring and Natural Disaster Alerts (Cemaden), the meteorologist and climatologist José Mareng, Brazil will increasingly be a "climate of extremes".

For many climate experts, the rise in temperatures on the planet produces extreme phenomena such as the last rains in Minas, which are the most intense in the last 100 years, becoming more and more frequent.

Days before the rains that hit Minas Gerais, the region was hit by a heatwave. In Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state, which was hard hit by the rains, the highest temperature this year was recorded at 34.3ºC.

Brazil continues to burn: Minas Gerais region, in the southeast of the country, suffers from more than 3,400 fires in September

According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), Minas Gerais was affected by 6,553 heat spots in 2019 alone. The number already exceeds the total of 2018. In September alone, Inpe detected 3,446 fire spots in Minas Gerais.

The Minas Gerais government decided to set up a task force to fight fire in Rio Doce State Park. There is still no confirmation of the size of the affected area, but the State Forest Institute has received information that the fire started in a criminal way.

The team was formed by the State Forest Institute, Fire Department, Military Police, Brigades against fires, and volunteers. In total there are over 200 involved. The works are also supported by aircraft.

In another Brazilian state, in Mato Grosso, the Chapada dos Guimarães National Park is the target of arson. The state government has already declared an emergency.