Brazilian Daniel Alves, 47, felt the omen of misfortune when the cloudy water reached his knee. As the level of the Jacuí River rose, his building and his entire neighborhood in the city of Canoas, in Rio Grande do Sul, were submerged under several meters of water. He and his family of three were isolated for 24 hours, desperate and at the mercy of the weather, until rescuers were able to reach them this Saturday. Many of his neighbors, like him, have lost everything in the last week due to serious flooding caused by a storm of intense rain that unleashed one of the biggest climate catastrophes in Brazil’s recent history. “What is happening is devastating. We thought the rain would stop, but that didn’t happen,” Alves says on the phone. “This has no explanation.”
In Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, which has 11 million inhabitants, more than half of the municipalities have been affected by these unprecedented floods. So far, authorities have counted 75 people dead, 103 missing and 155 injured. Some 700,000 people have been affected, 80,000 people have been evicted, more than 4,000 properties are without electricity and 800,000 without water, according to the state government. The Civil Defense bodies of the state capital, Porto Alegre, and Rio Grande do Sul reported that at least 18,000 people have been transferred to shelters.
“It is the worst disaster recorded in the history of Rio Grande do Sul. Perhaps one of the biggest disasters that the country has recorded in its recent history,” the governor, Eduardo Leite, said this Saturday in a press delegation. A state of public calamity has been declared in the region. Leite fears that many services will collapse in the most populated cities in the coming days.
The federal, state and municipal governments have mobilized a large part of public officials to carry out rescue and shelter operations; Hundreds of firefighters, police and civilian volunteers work in search and rescue. From Brasília, 100 members of the National Force were sent to Rio Grande do Sul on the afternoon of Friday, the 3rd, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who flew over the region this Sunday accompanied by the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, and from the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco — promised to send hundreds of millions of reais for joint efforts. “It is time to help Rio Grande do Sul,” Lula said this Sunday. It is the second presidential visit in this crisis.
Destroyed bridges and blocked roads make the distribution of aid difficult in part of the affected regions. Many cities lost a large part of their land access, and others, such as Muçum and Sinimbu, were isolated.
In southern Brazil, severe flooding like this was rare in recent decades. But in the last year, the number of extreme weather events has accelerated worryingly. In the last nine months alone, Rio Grande do Sul has suffered three significant floods: in September 2023, last January, and the current one. Santa Tereza, a small city of 1,700 inhabitants, has been one of the cities punished by all three.
Rudi Birck, 62, has lost everything twice. Owner of a shoe store and a small insurance agency in Eldorado do Sul, he had his businesses flooded in the rainy season last September. When the Jacuí River invaded his house, he decided to grab what he could and flee with his family, on the 1st, to the city of Lajeado. Now, he cannot return to the town where he has lived for 40 years because the Lajeado bridges have collapsed and land access is blocked, but he fears that his house is submerged. “I don’t even know if I have a house to live in now,” Birck says by phone. “We are shaken and emotionally devastated. Years of work lost in a few hours, days. Destroyed cities, lost friends and family. We are alive and we can start again.”
Birck regrets that his state did not take more preventive measures in the face of the imminent catastrophe. He believes many lives could have been saved if authorities had learned from recent climate disasters and been more agile. “We already had an event in September to use as an example and preparation, but nothing was done. “What we saw here were many anonymous heroes with their small boats, entering strong currents, risking their lives to save strangers.”
The solidarity that Birck refers to is reflected throughout Rio Grande do Sul. On Saturday night, under heavy rain and with water at chest height, dozens of volunteers joined together in a large human cordon to push the small boats that loaded with people rescued in the Mathias Velho neighborhood of Canoas. Others, in many other places, volunteered on social media to individually search for people trapped on roofs.
In Porto Alegre, early this Sunday the Guaíba River, which surrounds the entrance to the city, reached a historic height of 5.32 meters above its natural level; the largest in more than 80 years. Its waters were transferred throughout the historic center of the city. Until Saturday, the rate of rise of the river was 8 centimeters per hour. In the neighborhoods near the river, most of the streets are flooded, with water and dirt covering cars and light poles.
The Gasómetro Plant, an emblematic century-old building that serves as a postcard of Porto Alegre, with its 117-meter-high chimney, located on the banks of the Guaíba River, now concentrates the tasks of the rescue teams for the victims of the floods in the small islands and the metropolitan region that make up the city. The homeless are taken to the imposing building in boats and disembark in an improvised port.
On normal days, the extensive bank of the Guaíba River attracts thousands of locals who walk, exercise and take pride in the beautiful sunset that the place provides them. Today, disaster, pain and despair dominate the area decorated by mud and tents. Public agents and volunteers offer dry clothing and food to those who arrive, and then transport those who have lost everything to shelters.
A study carried out by the Institute of Hydraulic Research (IPH) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul indicates that the high water level in the regional capital, of about five meters, will stabilize for another three days, without reducing the flood level, three meters, next week.
What many want, now, is for the rain to stop and for the water to recede.
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