The Iguazu Falls are made up of 275 cascades tumbling over towering cliffs on the border of Brazil and Argentina. The normal flow of water over the falls is 396,258 gallons of water per second, and at midweek, the flow registered at 3.8 million gallons of water per second.
With a flow 10 times greater than usual, authorities were forced to close the tourist walkway on the Brazilian side Wednesday due to safety concerns. This walkway is one of the tourist-frequented points because it provides viewing access to the Devil’s Throat, a set of waterfalls that make up the main attraction of the park.
On the Argentine side, walkways had been closed since Tuesday for the same reasons.
Wemerson Augusto, the communications coordinator of the park, told that this is an “atypical” phenomenon for October. He explained that is why officials decided to do a precautionary closure of the walkways while keeping the park still open to visitors. The civil defense of Paraná, the southern Brazilian state where the heavy rainfall was measured, said 24 municipalities were impacted as well. “Severe events” such as flooding forced more than 1,200 residents to evacuate the area and left almost 400 homes damaged. This is the highest flow in the falls since June 2014, when the flow peaked at 12.4 million gallons of water per second.
Tags: Iguazu Falls, South America, Tourism
