WORLD BRIEFING / BRAZIL

Raging torrents from a ruptured dam swamped a rural town in Brazil, killing a young girl and destroying at least 500 homes in a region already devastated by weeks of floods, authorities said.

Amateur video showed water inundating the northeastern village of Cocal, home to about 25,000 people, after the dam failed.

“It was like a tsunami,” Piaui state Gov. Wellington Dias said after visiting the area. “What I saw was frightening. It was a wall of water 65 feet high, equivalent to a three-story building,” Dias was quoted as saying on a website operated by SBT television.

Four people were still missing, Dias said. Authorities began evacuating some families from their homes about two hours before the dam failed, he said.