The south of Brazil is not experiencing any respite: rain fell again on Friday on Porto Alegre and its region, still largely under water, where the number of displaced people has doubled in the last few hours.
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The torrential rains that fell last week in the state of Rio Grande do Sul caused rivers to swell, affecting nearly two million people and leaving 116 dead and 756 injured, according to the latest report released Friday by Civil Defense.
With 143 people still missing, authorities fear the toll will continue to rise as the region expects “heavy” rainfall throughout the weekend.
Over the past 24 hours, the number of people forced to evacuate their homes since last week has almost doubled, reaching nearly 400,000 people, according to Civil Defense. More than 70,000 victims were taken care of in shelters.
Despite the new rains, residents of the regional capital of 1.4 million people are trying to find a semblance of normality.
Some stores are reopening, while water is slowly receding from some neighborhoods where traffic is heavy due to many still flooded streets across the city.
The region was expecting rain accompanied by “intense winds and hail” on Friday, according to the National Institute of Meteorology.
The specialized site MetSul Meteorologia announced for its part “a new period of intense atmospheric instability”, with cumulative precipitation which could reach up to 200 mm on Monday in Porto Alegre.
AFP
In the metropolis of 3.4 million inhabitants, bottled water remains rare, despite the incessant ballet, night and day, of tanker trucks supplying shelters, hospitals, buildings and even hotels.
Paddy fields
The violence of these historic floods damaged or destroyed more than 85,000 homes.
Fields and machines under water, livestock farms and warehouses inaccessible, the natural disaster also hit hard the agricultural sector, the engine of the local and national economy.
In the rice fields surrounding Porto Alegre, AFP journalists noted that the water level made crops inaccessible.
AFP
Rice is one of the main crops of this state, the southernmost of the country, as well as an essential food on the plate of Brazilians.
Rice fields “with up to two meters of water were lost,” testifies Daniel Dalbosco, who owns 300 hectares of land in Eldorado do Sul, west of Porto Alegre. His neighbors “lost between 40 and 50 hectares. It’s very, very complicated,” sighs the farmer.
Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency, said Friday that the floods were the result of global warming coupled with the natural weather phenomenon El Niño.
AFP
“Even if El Niño fades, which it will, the long-term effects of climate change will be felt. Every fraction of a degree of temperature increase means that our climate will become more extreme,” she said at a press conference in Geneva.
“Our climate is on steroids” and extreme floods and intense heat waves will continue to “multiply,” she warned.
