Courtesy of Karine Pitana Flores da Silva
Pitana’s kitchen the day he evacuated his house. “I just don’t know what I’m going to find when I get home,” he says.
Karine Pitana Flores da Silva
There are strong inequalities between the north of the country and the richer south. But even in Rio Grande do Sul, one of Brazil’s wealthiest states, Porto Alegre’s wealthy neighborhoods contrast sharply with the decaying cities on its outskirts, such as Canoas.
Nearly three weeks after the first rains hit southern Brazil, water degrees are still too high for Pitana to return home.
While the waters recede very slowly, Pitana is now trapped with her brother and family in a community located in the heights. She also can’t go to work, even though hospitals desperately need nurses like her.
“I go out to move, my brother and sister-in-law take me and my daughter to shelters, and we end up taking other people there,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense for me to stay at home with my hands tied. . . It also occupies our mind when we see others.
Ironically, the so-called Canoas comes from the Portuguese word meaning “canoes,” but that didn’t spare the city from the worst floods: it was one of the hardest hit.
Pitana is lucky to have centers to turn to. About a quarter of Brazilians staying in transitional shelters come from Canoas, according to state government data.
The population of Porto Alegre is four times larger than that of Canoas, but less than a fifth of the rest of the people temporarily housed are from the capital. Many “gaúchos”, as the population of Rio Grande do Sul is called, can resort to the city’s houses.
These inequalities persist in Brazil, despite the economic expansion that in the first two decades of this century lifted millions of people out of poverty. The number of other people living in extreme poverty has fallen from about 15 per cent in 2001 to less than 10 per cent. 6% of the population in 2022. And just before the Covid-19 pandemic, it had fallen to its lowest point since 1980.
Yet the source of income inequality remains stubbornly high. Since the early 1990s, the gap between the richest and poorest Brazilians has narrowed, though not by much, and Brazil remains the eighth most unequal country in the world, according to World Bank data. It ranks second in equality among all Latin American countries, only ahead of Suriname.
As floods battered the swanky state capital, so did criminals willing to loot.
In recent weeks, the Brazilian government arrested another 97 people for flood-related crimes, most commonly for stealing items, adding jet skis and looting, Rio Grande do Sul’s public safety section told CNN. Of those, 34 were arrested in transitional shelters.
According to authorities, reports of sexual abuse in some shelters have also led to at least six arrests, forcing the local government to set up shelters only for women and girls. The police and army workers’ corps also got special education to make sure they are good enough. Internal security of the shelters.
In Rio Grande do Sul, crime rates are lower than the national average and violent crime has followed a downward trajectory, reaching an all-time low in 2023, drug trafficking and robberies remain problems.
Brazil as a whole, however, remains one of the most damaging countries in the world. Although homicide rates have declined, they are still the highest in the world, with more than 45,000 cases, according to UN data.
Renan Mattos/Reuters
Rio Grande do Sul has been battered by so much rain for so long that the government says it may be only weeks before the floods recede, especially if more rain falls.
More than 30 inches (750 mm) of rain fell in parts of the state in two and a half weeks starting in late April. That’s just a few inches of what a city like Chicago or Dallas records in an entire year.
According to science, it is the type of excessive weather phenomenon that will become more common in the region as the climate crisis deepens.
A major operation is underway for the state to recover, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva disbursed a whopping $10 billion for the reconstruction of the region.
But first, anger is growing at the slow pace of aid, as citizens complain that inadequate spending on infrastructure may have made the crisis less destructive. They are preparing for weeks of increased disruption as flooding may not pass. far.
Ironically, levees built decades ago to prevent rivers and lakes from overflowing are now trapping water, keeping much of the state flooded, as well as Canoas.
“The water entered on this side of the barriers, now it will take a long time, 45, 60 days to reach the other side,” Canoas Mayor Jairo Jorge da Silva said last week in an interview with Brazilian television channel Globo. “We have a giant swimming pool. “
“The barriers end up preventing the flow of water in the opposite direction, the drainage of the city,” said Pedro Cortês, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of São Paulo.
“They have no idea of a drainage formula if the barriers weren’t enough,” said Cortes, who is also a weather analyst for CNN Brasil, a CNN affiliate.
The magnitude may not be the same, but some observers say those floods are Hurricane Katrina’s moment for Lula.
Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
According to Cortês, the combination of lack of funding, lack of plan-making, and an unprecedented scenario left the government caught off guard.
“Unfortunately, investments to mitigate the effects of climate change and deal with emergencies have not reached what is needed,” Cortês said.
“The state of Rio Grande do Sul is not prepared for this kind of tragedy: obviously it is an exceptional volume of water, but the state did not have a good enough strategy to deal with it. “
And the government has had plenty of time to prepare. A study by Brazilian fact-checking firm Lupa showed that 90% of all spaces affected by the devastating rains had experienced at least one flood or emergency from heavy rains in the past decade.
Despite cautionary signs, Porto Alegre’s investments in flood prevention systems actually declined between 2021 and 2022 and were not even included in the 2023 annual budget. At the state level, investments in reaction to the crisis represent only 0. 2% of the budget for 2024, despite emergencies in the last year.
“In Porto Alegre there have been floods in recent years, although not of this volume but of abundant volumes of water,” says Cortês. “It was a very, very record-breaking situation, but unfortunately, because of what we know about climate change, unfortunately, it’s possible that this could be repeated in the coming years. “
With no professionals at the start of the flooding, volunteers had to take matters into their own hands.
One of the volunteers, Fabiano Saldanha, a 48-year-old businessman from Porto Alegre, who used his jet ski to rescue other people trapped in their homes.
“Basically, the population, us volunteers, would rescue other people,” Saldanha said. “It’s the other people who helped the other people. “
He teamed up with other volunteers and coordinated groups on jet skis and small boats, navigating narrow, debris-strewn lanes to reach some of the trapped people. Saldanha says he went 10 days without seeing his family.
Carlos Macedo/AP
“One thing I kept saying: ‘No one will be left behind,'” he recalls. He said he believed the government struggled to cope with the crisis in the early days.
“They wanted to do it (the fire department, civil defense, police), but I think it was all a little bit bureaucratic,” he told CNN. “I think they lacked a little bit of logistics and organization. “
Even when the government fixed and ordered evacuations, some other people chose not to listen, thinking that the water would not reach them.
“One of those who welcome me,” Pitana admitted. My mother, father and daughter were evacuated earlier and asked me to accompany them, but I told them I was going to stay. “
Overnight, her space began to flood, first through the sewers of the bathrooms. Within an hour, the water was up to his knees. Then up to the waist.
“That’s when we started to panic, it happened very quickly,” she says, referring to her and her husband. “We tied up some furniture, closed some doors, and then left. Outside, the water was higher, already up to our chests. “
She shared with CNN a photo of her in the chest-deep floods, clinging to her puppy’s burrow with a full suitcase and a bag hanging from her fence to stay dry, just before she was forced to flee.
Pitana was rescued thanks to two young men who helped her and an elderly neighbor get on their boat, although it was too small to accommodate her husband as well.
“They had a vest on the boat and they gave it to him, he put it on so he could swim,” he said. “[The current] is very strong and the water is already very deep, maybe more than 2 meters, I think. “
Pitana says he called for help, but didn’t find any emergency places.
Thousands of other people in the domain have stories like Pitana’s. When Lula landed in Canoas on Wednesday, on his third trip to the flood-stricken domains, he tried to quell the discontent by telling reporters: “All those who have lost their homes, take back their homes. “
In addition to the $10 billion promised to rebuild the state, Brazil is asking for more from foreign institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank.
Cortês says state and federal governments want to take advantage of the urgency to build quickly and instead plan more carefully for long-term and climate change.
“The tendency is to try to rebuild what has been lost. If this is done, cities will not be more resilient than before, and that is not enough,” he explained, calling for a thorough investigation of the risks. “Any attempt to rebuild will have to think about preparing the villages to face these extreme weather events. “
Pitana can’t think about the future of life, he only focuses on the present, finding his new overwhelming truth. But he hopes the government will do everything it can to prevent this kind of crisis from falling again.
“I think that, given the seriousness of the situation, they will do anything; they have to,” he said. “We don’t need to think about it, but it will happen again. “
CNN’s Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.