City in Brazil's Amazon faces worst floods in 56 yearsManaus, a city deep in Brazil's Amazon jungle, is suffering the worst flooding it has seen in 56 years, civil defense officials said Monday. Torrential rain in Brazil's north has swollen the Amazon river Amazon River Portuguese Rio Amazonas River, northern South America. It is the largest river in the world in volume and area of drainage basin; only the Nile River of eastern and northeastern Africa exceeds it in length. and its tributaries, including the Negro river Negro River or Guainía River River, northwestern South America. A major tributary of the Amazon River, it rises in the rainforest of eastern Colombia, where it is known as the Guainía, and forms a section of the border between Colombia and Venezuela. on which Manaus sits, they said. Over the weekend, the Negro river rose to 29.62 meters (88.32 feet) -- just a centimeter centimeter (sĕn`tĭmē'tər), abbr. cm, unit of length equal to 0.01 meter, the basic unit of length in the metric system. The centimeter is the unit of length in the cgs system. It is approximately equal to 0. off the level it reached in 1953, when it hit 29.63 meters. At least 18,000 people have been affected by the deluge Deluge (dĕl`y  j), in the Bible, the overwhelming flood that covered the earth and destroyed every living thing except the family of Noah and the creatures in his ark. , which has swamped part of Manaus and washed sewage and trash into houses.
Many residents are refusing to leave their homes. "We have to evacuate e·vac·u·ate v. 1. To empty or remove the contents of. 2. To excrete or discharge waste matter, especially of the bowels. around 70 people, but they don't want to leave," one civil defense official, Antonio Batista, told the Globo News television channel. Around 60 people died in April and May when torrential rains lashed the normally dry north and northeast of Brazil. 
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