At least 432 people have been killed in torrential floods and landslides which swept down hillsides outside Rio de Janeiro, GloboNews television said yesterday.

Most of the deaths were recorded in the town of Nova Friburgo, some 140 kilometres north of Rio.

The town of Terespolis, some 100 kilometres from Rio registered 175 victims and the neighbouring town of Petropolis 39 deaths.

There were also 17 people killed in another small town of Sumidouro, the television channel reported.

Officials warned the death toll, in what is now Brazil’s worst natural disaster in decades, was set to rise as rescue teams manage to reach the stricken towns.

President Dilma Rousseff briefly visited the disaster zone, a mountainous area just north of Rio de Janeiro known as the Serrana.

Freakish storms there early on Wednesday dumped the equivalent of a months’ rain in just a few hours, sending mudslides and fierce torrents slicing through towns and hamlets, destroying homes, roads and bridges and knocking out telephone and power lines.

“One woman tried to save her children but her two-month-old baby was carried away by a torrent like a doll,” sobbed Angela, a 55-year-old resident of Teresopolis who saw the destruction unfold around her.

Tropical rains common at this time of year intensified unimaginably as a cold front moved in, unleashing the tragedy before dawn, while families slept in their homes.

“In eight hours... it rained as much as for the entire month,” said Paulo Canedo, a hydrologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

The deluge “caused avalanches of rocks and soil that carried everything down with them, picking up houses,” he said.

As weather forecasters warned of more rain in the hours and days ahead, rescuers aided by desperate residents dug through rubble and mud looking for survivors or bodies.

Local officials in Teresopolis said that 161 people died there, while officials in Petropolis counted 36 dead.