Brazil floods: Inside the dangerous rescue effort

They are among those who have at least made it out.

Many people are still stranded, or in some cases are choosing not to leave because they are afraid their flooded homes will be robbed.

But, as Luiz and Albertina describe, the rescue operations are fraught with danger too.

At a firefighter base in Porto Alegre, Ricardo Mattei, the city’s military firefighter chief, points at an aerial photograph he took from a recent rescue operation.

He tells me there used to be fifty homes and now there is only one.

It’s a small patch of land that is now entirely underwater.

All the homes but one have been entirely washed away leaving just fragments of their white frames, like skeletons, floating in the water.

“On one day, this aircraft saved 120 people from the roofs of houses,” he says, gesturing to the helicopter behind him.

With many roads underwater or flooded it is currently the only way of delivering food and aid to people still trapped and of transporting people to hospital – but it’s not without its risks too.

He shows us another video of two people standing on a roof of an underwater house waiting to be rescued before the house collapses into the brown water, saying it is “very dangerous” both for the people trapped and his team.