Seven days of heavy rain have affected 22,176 people in Paraná, a state in southern Brazil, leaving four dead and two missing, according to a bulletin released by the state's civil defense agency on Tuesday morning, September 15. The rains began on Wednesday, September 9, and caused damage in 80 municipalities, with flooded cities and stretches of highway closed. The count of affected people includes those whose homes were damaged or who lost power, water or communications.
The state recorded 3,022 damaged houses and 18 destroyed. At least 2,587 people left their homes: 2,182 took refuge with relatives or friends, and 405 went to public shelters. The largest share is in União da Vitória, a city in the state's south crossed by the Iguaçu River. City hall estimates at least 1,800 people displaced and 400 in public shelters. The river, whose normal level is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet), peaked at 6.275 meters (about 20.6 feet) on Monday afternoon, September 14, and began to recede slowly; at 8 a.m. on Tuesday it stood at 6.267 meters, according to monitoring by Copel, the Paraná power company.
Deaths and disappearances
Three of the four victims lived in Ponta Grossa, in the Campos Gerais region. According to news outlet g1, a family was buried while sleeping on the morning of Thursday, September 10, after a slope collapsed onto their house: Kauan da Silva Contador, 21, his partner Jaqueline Gabriela de Lima Andrade, 20, and her son Vinícius Hendrick de Lima Machado, 5. The bodies were found in the same bed, and the Fire Department said a wall and the roof collapsed under the impact.
The fourth victim was in Rio Branco do Sul, in the metropolitan region of Curitiba, the state capital. A man's body was found on Monday on the banks of the Ribeira River by the Paraná Military Fire Department, using a rescue jet ski and a rafting boat, CNN Brasil reported. Investigators suspect he disappeared while trying to drive across a submerged bridge; the car was found inside the river, and another man who was with him remains missing. In Tunas do Paraná, also in the metropolitan region, a resident of the Pacas community disappeared in the late afternoon after leaving home to fix water pipes at a spring. His route required crossing a bridge swept by the current; community members began the search, supported by the Tactical Rescue Operations Group (Gost).
State response and climate warning
Since Friday, September 11, the Paraná government's Integrated Management Office has operated at the Regional Integrated Command and Control Center in Curitiba to centralize information and coordinate teams. State Security Secretary Hudson Teixeira said that "all efforts and resources are being used to mitigate the effects of the climate events that have hit Paraná in recent days". On the highway network, the main closed stretch was between Curitiba and Adrianópolis, in the Ribeira Valley, which links Paraná to São Paulo state; the Federal Highway Police maintains a real-time map of road conditions.
The disaster comes in a September with above-average rainfall in several Paraná cities, g1 reported, and as federal agencies warn of a very strong El Niño. Bulletin No. 2 of the 2026-2027 El Niño Panel, prepared by the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) with partners including the water agency ANA and the disaster monitoring center Cemaden, says there is a 100% probability the phenomenon will remain active until early 2027. It forecasts above-average rain, river floods and landslides in Brazil's South, where soil is already wetter than in previous El Niño episodes. The bulletin does not link this particular episode to the phenomenon. Even so, it ranks the South as the region most exposed to its impacts in spring and summer.