Residents of Duque de Caxias, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, wait for floods to subside to able to clean up houses after heavy rains hit the area in the last days. A powerful storm has claimed at least a dozen lives in southeastern Brazil, mostly in the mountainous parts of Rio de Janeiro state, where authorities on Saturday deployed rescue teams to deal with a "critical" situation. The deluge came as Brazil, South America's largest country, suffers through a recent string of extreme weather events, which experts say are more likely to occur due to climate change. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES