Au­thor­i­ties in south­ern Brazil rushed Wednes­day to res­cue sur­vivors of mas­sive flood­ing that has killed at least 100 peo­ple, but some res­i­dents re­fused to leave be­long­ings be­hind while oth­ers re­turned to evac­u­at­ed homes de­spite the risk of new storms.

Heavy rains and flood­ing in the south­ern state of Rio Grande do Sul since last week al­so have left 128 peo­ple miss­ing, au­thor­i­ties said. More than 230,000 have been dis­placed, and much of the re­gion has been iso­lat­ed by the flood­wa­ters.

More storms are ex­pect­ed in the state on Wednes­day, with hail and wind gusts reach­ing up to 100 kilo­me­ters per hour (62 mph), ac­cord­ing to the na­tion­al me­te­o­rol­o­gy in­sti­tute’s morn­ing bul­letin.

Staffers of the state’s civ­il de­fense agency told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press they have been strug­gling to per­suade res­i­dents of the city of El­do­ra­do do Sul, one of the hard­est hit by the floods, to leave their homes. It is lo­cat­ed be­side Por­to Ale­gre, near the cen­ter of the state’s coast­line. At least four peo­ple de­clined to evac­u­ate.

A fly­over of El­do­ra­do do Sul in a mil­i­tary he­li­copter showed hun­dreds of hous­es sub­merged, with on­ly their roofs vis­i­ble. Res­i­dents were us­ing small boards, surf­boards and per­son­al wa­ter­craft to move around. May­or Er­nani de Fre­itas told lo­cal jour­nal­ists that the city “will be to­tal­ly evac­u­at­ed.”

“It will take at least a year to re­cov­er,” he said.

Rio Grande do Sul’s Gov. Ed­uar­do Leite, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence late Tues­day, ap­pealed to res­i­dents to stay out of harm’s way, as the an­tic­i­pat­ed down­pour may cause more se­vere flood­ing across the state.

“It isn’t the time to re­turn home,” he said.

The civ­il de­fense agency’s own ur­gent warn­ing ask­ing dis­placed res­i­dents not to re­turn to flood­ed ar­eas al­so stressed the risk of dis­ease trans­mis­sion.

Army Gen. Marce­lo Zuc­co, one of the co­or­di­na­tors of res­cue op­er­a­tions, told the AP his team is work­ing at full speed be­fore heavy rains that are fore­cast to hit the Por­to Ale­gre area this week­end. Mod­er­ate rain was falling Wednes­day af­ter­noon in the city.

“We hope the next rains are not like those we saw, but there’s no way to be sure there won’t be trou­ble ahead of us,” Zuc­co said.

“At this mo­ment we are fo­cus­ing on fin­ish­ing res­cue op­er­a­tions and start­ing lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port to the pop­u­la­tion. That’s bring­ing wa­ter, med­ica­tion, food and trans­porta­tion for the sick to some hos­pi­tal,” the gen­er­al added.

He al­so said some im­prove­ment in con­di­tions for the day helped his men fi­nal­ly ac­cess some ar­eas by land.

Over the week­end, rain in north­ern Rio Grande do Sul could prompt re­newed swelling of rivers that are al­ready caus­ing wide­spread flood­ing around the Patos la­goon, where the Por­to Ale­gre mu­nic­i­pal re­gion is lo­cat­ed, Es­tael Sias, a me­te­o­rol­o­gist at a Rio Grande do Sul-based fore­cast­ing ser­vice, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

“We will re­main on this lev­el of alert at least un­til the end of the month,” she said.

A re­port by the Na­tion­al Con­fed­er­a­tion of Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties es­ti­mates dam­ages at 4.6 bil­lion reais ($930 mil­lion) in near­ly 80% of Rio Grande do Sul’s mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

Gov. Leite has said that the enor­mous im­pact will re­quire some­thing akin to the Mar­shall Plan for Eu­rope’s post-WWII re­cov­ery. Al­ready the state has asked the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to sus­pend debt pay­ments and cre­ate a fund for the south­ern re­gion.

On Tues­day, Con­gress passed a de­cree de­clar­ing a state of calami­ty in Rio Grande do Sul un­til the end of the year, al­low­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to quick­ly al­lo­cate mon­ey to mit­i­gate the cat­a­stro­phe and re­build re­gions af­fect­ed by the floods, by­pass­ing a spend­ing cap. The vote unit­ed sup­port­ers and op­po­nents of Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va’s gov­ern­ment.

“There is no lim­it to the pub­lic spend­ing nec­es­sary to re­solve the prob­lem of the calami­ty that to­day is rav­aging Rio Grande do Sul state,” Plan­ning and Bud­get Min­is­ter Si­mone Tebet told Ra­dio Gaucha in an in­ter­view.

POR­TO ALE­GRE, Brazil (AP)