A race against time begins Sunday in the south of Brazil to face the flood monsters which devastated the state of Rio Grande do Sul, killing nearly 70 people and driving more than 80,000 from their homes.
From the waterlogged streets or from the sky, the scale of the disaster is striking: houses whose roofs can barely be seen, residents who lost everything in a few minutes and the center of Porto Alegre, the modern capital and totally flooded the state where 1.4 million people live.
According to the municipality, the Guaiba River which crosses the city has reached the record level of 5.30 m, well beyond the historic peak of 4.76 m recorded during the floods of 1941. The water continues to advance in the metropolis and a hundred other localities, with ever more dramatic consequences. At least 66 people have died and 101 are missing, according to the latest report from Brazilian civil defense on Sunday.
In addition to the approximately 80,000 people evacuated from their homes, more than a million homes are deprived of water and the scale of the destruction is currently incalculable, according to Civil Defense. About 15,000 have taken refuge in shelters set up by state authorities, she said. In total, half a million people were directly affected by the disaster.
Warnings against landslides
From the Vatican, Pope Francis said on Sunday “pray for the inhabitants” of the State. “The Lord carries the deceased in his heart, he comforts their families and those who have had to leave their homes,” declared the sovereign pontiff.
Rosana Custodio, a 37-year-old nurse who had to flee her home in Porto Alegre, “lost everything”. “Thursday around midnight, the waters started to rise very quickly,” she told AFP via a WhatsApp message. “In a hurry, we went out in search of a safer place. But we couldn’t walk (…). My husband put our two little ones in a kayak and paddled with a bamboo pole. My son and I swam to the end of the street.”
They took refuge in his brother-in-law’s house, in Esteio, north of Porto Alegre, but the waters rose again on Friday and the tragedy repeated itself. “We were saved by a friend’s motorboat,” she says. Since then, she and her family have been sheltered but “we lost everything we had”. Rainfall eased overnight Saturday into Sunday but is expected to persist for the next 24 to 36 hours, with authorities now warning of landslides.
A “key day” for relief operations
Brazilian President Lula visited the area for the second time since the floods began. He has already called for a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild the region. “It’s time to join forces. We save lives. And we will continually need concrete support to get the city out of this tragedy,” wrote Sebastiao Melo on the social network X which receives Lula.
In the meantime, on the ground, the same scenes are repeated: residents taking refuge on their roofs waiting for help and small boats navigating what were streets and avenues. Sunday will be a “key day” for relief operations, said the presidency’s communications minister, Paulo Pimenta.
Concern is also starting to rise about the lack of food and the breakdown of production chains in this agricultural state, one of the most dynamic in Brazil and which accounts for a fifth of the country’s GDP. Faced with the risk of a shortage, the Porto Alegre town hall called on the population to ration water after the forced closure of four of the city’s six water treatment plants.
Porto Alegre partly cut off from the rest of the country
The floods have partly cut Porto Alegre off from the rest of the country. According to the traffic police, access routes from the south are cut off about 15 km from the city, but it is still possible to access it from the north.
The main bus station is flooded and closed and Porto Alegre International Airport has suspended all operations since Friday for an indefinite period. The rains are favored by “a disastrous cocktail” which combines the meteorological phenomenon El Niño to climate change and other extreme phenomena, Brazilian climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP.
Rio Grande do Sul has already been hit several times by deadly bad weather, notably in September, when 31 people died after the passage of a devastating cyclone. According to experts, these extreme weather phenomena have increased in frequency and intensity with global warming.
Brazil experienced a period of historic drought last year in the north of the country and the number of forest fires reached a record from January to April.
