As three days of heavy rains eased, authorities feared a sharp rise in the death toll as rescuers reach communities cut off by the devastating torrents of mud, water and debris in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco.

Churches, schools and hospitals were underwater, or had simply disappeared in the floods that turned streets into angry rivers in a region already wracked by extreme poverty.

Tons of mud covered what were once the streets of Branquinha and Rio Largo on the banks of the Mundau River in hard-hit Alagoas, burying houses, businesses and houses of worship.

In many towns the destruction was total, with only pieces of furniture, pots and pans, clothing and other personal articles remaining after the buildings were flattened by the floods.

In Rio Largo, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the state capital Maceio, Cisera Duda, 39, showed an AFP reporter the few things she was able to salvage: a dog, a bird and a wet mattress.

"I managed to save something, but I wasn't able to get hardly anything out of the house," she said.

For Eduardo Almeida, his wife and three young children, the floods wiped out not only their home but their livelihood, in the small store and restaurant that was completely washed away.

"This was my life, I do not have anything else," he cried, sifting through the sodden remains where his property used to stand.

The water began to rise at 5:00 am Sunday in Branquinha, 80 kilometers from the Alagoas state capital, Maceio, said Olivaldo da Silva, 47.

"Anyone who did not leave by 10:00 am died," he told AFP as he climbed a ladder Wednesday to try to clean the mud off his roof.

Dramatic television pictures showed survivors scrambling to rooftops to avoid being swept away, clinging desperately to lines of rope as rescuers in helicopters rushed to pluck them from the muddy floodwaters.

In Maceio, a fire spokesman said: "The tragedy is total, the city is paralyzed."

A tearful survivor in the town of Palmares, Pernambuco told Globonews television, "It destroyed our city. It destroyed everything."

Civil defense authorities estimated that some 600 people were missing, basing the tally on reports to authorities and the accounts of locals. Alagoas Governor Teotonio Vilela Filho said Tuesday there could be as many as 1,000 people missing.

"But we are worried because bodies are starting to appear on the beaches and the rivers," he told the government newswire Agencia Brasil.

The most devastated area was along a stretch of the Mundau river that runs through Alagoas where firefighters said entire riverside communities were washed away.

In the town of Paudalho, on the banks of the Capibaribe river in Pernambuco, a hospital with a 300 bed capacity was swept away by floods, local television reported. Its patients were moved to nearby shelters.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced late Tuesday that he would be back to overfly the area on Thursday, as Defense Minister Nelson Jobim has done, the official news agency Agencia Brasil reported.

The toll in Alagoas held steady at 29, but civil defense authorities raised the toll in the larger neighboring state of Pernambuco to 16.

Authorities estimate that 180,000 people have been left homeless by the disaster.

The rains have devastated sugar cane production with estimated losses at more than 56 million dollars, said Pernambuco sugar cane growers association chief Renato Cunha. Brazil's northeastern region accounts for 12 percent of the country's total sugar cane.

Tons of food, medicine, mattresses and blankets were being flown in from around the country, a firefighters' spokesman told AFP. But some flooded areas were reachable only by helicopter.

Air Force rescue crews on Wednesday were able to pluck 74 stranded families in Santa Polonia, Alagoas, local media said.

Lula held a crisis cabinet meeting that included ministers and the governors of the affected states.

Afterwards, officials announced 55 million dollars in emergency aid, half of which had already been delivered to the state governments.

In April, flooding and landslides triggered by torrential rain killed at least 229 people in the Rio de Janeiro area.

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