South Brazil Flood Update:

Excerpts from a Michael Fox article -

'The Future is Dark'

Six hundred thousand people were pushed from their homes. Fifty thousand are still in shelters. Rubble lines streets in towns across the state, as residents clear out their once cherished possessions and wait for them to be picked up by city clean up crews.

"I think it's going to take the state a decade to get back on its feet," Ary Vanazzi, the mayor of Sao Leopoldo, a city near Porto Alegre, told Al Jazeera. "It's going to need a lot of federal investment, a lot of planning, a lot of will, creativity and effort."

"You can see that the areas with the most flooding were the regions with the poorest communities", said researcher Andre Augustin.