El Niño – 150.000 Menschen auf der Flucht vor Hochwasser

"We are going to have a few complicated months. The consequences will be serious," Ricardo Colombi, governor of the Corrientes region, said after flying over the worst-affected areas with national Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena. Pena said that national government aid was already on its way and that President Mauricio Macri, who took office this month, intended to make improving infrastructure a priority so that such flooding did not occur again. "Argentina has a very big lack of infrastructure," he said. Officials in Uruguay said some 9,000 people near swollen rivers had been forced to leave their homes. Uruguay’s national emergency office said it expected water to remain at its current levels for several days before subsiding. Civil defense authorities in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul told The Associated Press that at least 7,000 residents had evacuated. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff also flew over the flooded areas on the border with Argentina and Uruguay on Saturday morning. Rio Grande do Sul state civil defense officials said 1,795 people were left homeless there after 38 towns were affected by heavy rains. Heavy rains began falling in the region last week, part of a transcontinental El Nino weather pattern stretching east and southeast from coastal Ecuador and Peru to the Atlantic. "We knew it would have its strongest impact toward the end of spring, start of summer … but we could not know how much," Uruguay Emergency Office Chief Fernando Traversa said. This year’s El Nino, which sparks global climate extremes, is the strongest in more than 15 years, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said last month. "Severe droughts and devastating flooding being experienced throughout the tropics and subtropical zones bear the hallmarks of this El Nino," WMO chief Michel Jarraud said in a statement. – See more at: http://www.argentinanews.net/index.php/sid/239761407#sthash.qWMlWdVe.dpufUrsache sind heftige Regenfälle durch das Wetterphänomen El Niño, erklärten die Behörden.