A hundred people are now known to have died as torrential rain triggered landslides and torrents of mud near the city of Recife in northeast Brazil.
Rescue workers continue the search for people still missing after poor neighbourhoods and shantytowns were swept away in the region.
President Jair Bolsonaro posted a video on social media showing him in a helicopter flying over the area.
He later said it had been too dangerous to land because of “soil instability”.
Some 1,200 rescue personnel, using boats and helicopters, were deployed in the state of Pernambuco where the disaster occurred.
Luiz Estevão Aguiar told TV Globo that he had lost 11 relatives.
Deadly flooding and landslides have killed hundreds of people in Brazil over the past year.
Experts link the bad weather to La Niña, a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide.
Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.
The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.
Rescue teams have found dozens of bodies buried after floodwater tore through the neighborhood on Saturday, and said they expect to find more.
At least 14 people remain missing, said disaster management officials for the state of Pernambuco, the scene of the latest in a series of deadly weather disasters to hit the country in recent months.
Crews are using dogs trained to sniff for people and planes to locate the missing. At least 24 municipalities in Pernambuco have declared a state of emergency and more than 6,000 people have lost their homes or been forced to flee.
The rains began last week but intensified over the weekend. Overnight Friday into Saturday, the rain that fell in some parts of Pernambuco was 70 percent of what would be normal for the whole month of May.
Weather-related tragedies are becoming a familiar script in Brazil. They tend to hit hardest in poor neighborhoods, especially hillside favelas, or slums.
In February, 233 people were killed in floods and landslides in the southeastern city of Petropolis, in Rio de Janeiro state.
In January, torrential rains claimed at least 28 lives in southeastern Brazil, mostly in Sao Paulo state.
By: Isaac Clottey
