PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - In all her 74 years, Mrs Lorena Martins had never seen anything so horrible: a torrent of foul, rust-coloured flood water engulfing her modest home in Brazil, taking away everything but her family.

With help from her son-in-law, Mrs Martins stepped out of a boat manned by firefighters who managed to persuade them to abandon their home in a poor district of the city of Porto Alegre, which has been devastated by days of flooding.

The latest in a string of weather catastrophes to hit the South American giant has left dozens of people dead or missing and forced nearly 130,000 from their homes in the capital of southern Rio Grande do Sul state.

The boat carrying Mrs Martins arrived at a flooded intersection that has become a makeshift pier for rescue operations.

Motorboats, jet skis and row boats came and went constantly as crews trid to persuade people who refuse to leave their flooded homes.

A military police officer from neighbouring Santa Catarina state, Mr Dionis Bellettini, has shown up as a volunteer, eager to help in this improvised rescue armada.

Some people are refusing to leave their homes for fear of seeing them looted, said Mr Bellettini, who wore a life jacket and civilian clothes despite his military status.

“We cannot force them to leave. It is optional,” he told AFP, as three men behind him tried to repair a motorboat needed for the many rescue trips that awaited them. A four-wheel-drive vehicle towing yet another boat pulled up to join the operation.

‘It is so sad’

These volunteers are urgently needed because the government cannot save all the people standing on their rooftops, looking at streets turned into rivers in this booming 250-year-old city of 1.4 million people, which manages at once to be both modern and quaint.

Mrs Martins, her son-in-law Elisandro, his wife Carmen and their 14-year-old daughter Giovanna stood on the street corner fiddling with bags of food, like uncooked pasta. They looked out sadly at all the water everywhere and comforted their two dogs.

The moment was almost peaceful compared with May 4, when they saw the reddish flood waters rise steadily in their home and they decided to stay put anyway.

“Today, I saw death,” said Mrs Martins, acknowledging that the flood water scared her.

“My little house is abandoned now. I am trying to stay calm,” she said as her voice quivered, and she could no longer speak. Mrs Martins looked positively exhausted.

“It is so sad,” she managed to say. “I think about the poorest people.”

The toll in the flood so far is 83 dead and 111 missing.

‘Scenes of terror’

The number of people forced from their homes is also rising as rescue efforts press on during a break in the torrential rain.

A stunning amount of water has pushed the Guaiba river and its tributaries to the highest level ever recorded.

“We have seen scenes of terror,” said Mr Filipe Bezbatti, a 27-year-old event organiser in a wet suit, as he tried to fix the boat he used to make one rescue run after another.

“It should be the government that is leading,” Mr Bezbatti complained.

“This is people helping people,” added Mr Jefferson Martines, a 28-year-old entrepreneur who was also helping with the rescues.

The two men met on the street corner that has become a makeshift operations centre and are now on the same team.

Not far away, a nurse named Paola Martinez held out food to try to lure three dogs across a waterlogged street. Mr Bezbatti eventually helped her get them into a boat and onto dry land.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said the state will get all the resources it needs in order to rebuild. And Governor Eduardo Leite has said it will need nothing short of a Marshall Plan, like the one that rebuilt Europe after World War II.

But for now, people have more immediate needs: things like food, clothing and medicine.

At midday, the sun was beating down as neighbours rescued neighbours all over the flooded and shell-shocked city. AFP