Alarms rang out across the Brazilian city of Petrópolis on Thursday, warning of more heavy rain to come after floods and landslides killed at least 117 people with more than 100 missing.  The rescue mission has been temporarily called off and some people, fearing more destruction, are fleeing the city. One volunteer rescuer said that finding survivors under the rubble was now “practically impossible”. This week’s rainfall in Petrópolis was the heaviest in nearly a century. The downpours on Tuesday alone exceeded the average for the whole of February, triggering landslides and floods in the city north of Rio and turning streets into rivers of mud. Homes were engulfed and vehicles swept away. The first funerals took place on Thursday for the victims who had been formally identified, with the stories of those who died starting to come to light – like that of Helena, who had started at nursery just a few days before the landslide destroyed the home she shared with her family. “I enjoyed my baby’s company for little more than one year,” her mother Giselli Carvalho, who also lost her mother and niece in the disaster, told Brazilian news channel Globo TV. (BBC)…[+]