Pictures: 'Amazon Venice' scrambles to stay above floods

Twenty of Amazonas' municipalities are in a situation of emergency

Last updated: May 15, 2021 | 15:52

compiled by Balaram Menon, Senior Web Editor and with inputs from AP

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The rivers have been swelling for weeks in Brazil's Amazon region, and residents in a town that bills itself as `The Venice of Amazonas' traded motorcycles for canoes and are clambering atop fresh-laid planks inside their homes to stay dry.

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Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama, Amazonas state, Brazil.

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Anama, home to 14,000 people on a tributary of the Solimoes River that flows toward capital Manaus, is just one municipality of dozens in Amazonas state that has seen life upended by unusual rainfall.

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Amazonas's civil defense secretariat warned the flood could soon be biggest recorded in the last century, and said 350,000 people have already been affected.

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Twenty of Amazonas' municipalities are in a situation of emergency, and 22 have rivers spilling over their banks. The latter group includes capital Manaus, where people have built makeshift bridges.

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Dogs stand on a porch ledge above floodwater in Anama.

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The Negro River, which flows past Manaus to meet the Solimoes River, could reach its highest-ever level within days, the state's government said this week.

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Increased precipitation is associated with the La Nina phenomenon, by which cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean impact global weather patterns.

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Noemia Ferreira Ribeiro stands on an elevated floor that was placed to avoid floodwater under her home in Anama.

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Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama.

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A residents navigates through a flooded street in Anama.

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Residents build raised floors in a flooded home in Anama.

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Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama.

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