
It was 6:00 in the morning when Brazilian farmer Vernei Kunz heard the roar of water as the Forqueta river overflowed its banks and swept away most of his 5,000 pigs.
Kunz, 60, has been farming for the past 42 years in the town of Travesseiro, one of hundreds devastated by weeks of cataclysmic flooding that killed more than 160 people in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.