Karine Pitana, a nurse from Canoas, Brazil, had just finished paying for her new couch when floods hit her town about two weeks ago. Though it’s just furniture, it meant a lot to her because she worked hard to buy it.
Talking to CNN from her brother’s house where she’s staying now, she cried, worrying about losing precious things like childhood and daughter’s photos in the flood.
The situation is different in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. It’s rich in history and looks luxurious with its grand buildings and big marinas. You might even see private helicopters landing there.
Deadly floods caused by a lot of rain have hit southern Brazil for weeks, causing a lot of damage. These floods have shown some big issues in the country: there’s still a lot of inequality, crime rates are high, and sometimes local leaders don’t manage things well and can even be corrupt.
Karine Pitana, 42 years old, had to leave her home with her little dog. It’s been two weeks now, and parts of her house are still flooded, so she can’t return yet. Picture shared by Karine Pitana Flores da Silva.
This is Pitana’s kitchen on the day she had to leave her house. She says, “I really don’t know what I’ll see when I go back home.” – Karine Pitana Flores da Silva
There’s a big gap between the rich south and the poorer north in Brazil. Even in wealthy places like Porto Alegre, there are fancy parts that look very different from the poorer towns nearby, like Canoas.
It’s been almost three weeks since the floods started in southern Brazil, and Pitana still can’t go back home because the water hasn’t gone down enough.
Now, Pitana is staying with her brother and his family in a safer area, but she can’t go to work either, even though hospitals need nurses like her a lot.
She helps out at shelters, trying to keep busy and help others. Canoas, which means “canoes” in Portuguese, was hit really hard by the floods, despite its name.
Pitana is considered lucky because she has family to stay with. But many people from Canoas are in shelters. In Porto Alegre, which is much bigger than Canoas, fewer people are in shelters because some folks have second homes outside the city to go to when there’s trouble.
Even though Brazil has grown economically and lifted many people out of poverty since the 2000s, there’s still a big difference between the rich and poor. The gap between rich and poor Brazilians has shrunk a bit since the 1990s, but Brazil is still one of the most unequal countries in the world.
This problem adds to Brazil’s crime issues. When the floods hit the fancy capital city, criminals came too, ready to steal.
In the past few weeks, authorities in Brazil arrested 97 people for crimes related to the floods. Most of these were for stealing things like jet skis and looting. Some of these arrests happened in the temporary shelters.
There were also reports of sexual abuse in some shelters, leading to at least six arrests. Because of this, the local government set up shelters just for women and children. Police and soldiers got special training to make sure the shelters are safe.
In Rio Grande do Sul, crime rates are lower than the national average, and violent crime has been going down. But drug dealing and theft are still problems.
But Brazil overall is still very dangerous. Even though the number of murders has dropped, it still has the most in the world, with over 45,000 cases, according to the UN.
Lula’s Big Crisis, Like Hurricane Katrina
Rio Grande do Sul got hit with a lot of rain for a long time, and officials say it might take weeks for the floodwater to go away, especially if it keeps raining.
In just two and a half weeks at the end of April, over 30 inches of rain fell in parts of the state. That’s almost as much rain as cities like Chicago or Dallas usually get in a whole year.
Because of the rain and flooding, more than 150 people have died, and even now, weeks later, 500,000 people still can’t go back home. Scientists say events like this, with extreme weather, will happen more often and be worse because of the climate crisis.
A big effort is happening to help the state recover. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is giving a huge $10 billion to help rebuild the region.
People are getting angrier because help took a long time to arrive at first. They say not enough money was spent on fixing things like dams and walls that could have made this disaster less bad. They’re getting ready for more trouble because the floodwater won’t go away quickly.
The old dams and walls that were built a long time ago to stop rivers from overflowing are now keeping the water in, flooding a lot of the state, including Canoas.
“The water got trapped on this side of the walls, and now it’s going to take a long time, maybe 45, 60 days, to get it to the other side,” said Canoas Mayor Jairo Jorge da Silva in an interview on Brazilian TV last week. “We’ve basically got a giant pool.”
“The walls stop the water from going the other way, from draining out of the city,” said Pedro Cortês, who teaches about the environment at the University of São Paulo. He’s also a climate expert for CNN Brasil.
Some people are saying this flood is like Hurricane Katrina was for the U.S., but not quite as big.
Cortês says that because of a lack of money, planning, and the unexpected situation, authorities were surprised by what happened.
“Sadly, the money spent on dealing with the effects of climate change and emergencies has been much less than needed,” Cortês said.
“The state of Rio Grande do Sul wasn’t ready for this kind of disaster. It was a lot of water, but the state didn’t have a good plan to handle it.”
And the government had time to get ready. Research by a Brazilian fact-checking website showed that almost all the areas hit by the heavy rain had seen floods or big rain emergencies in the past ten years.
Even though they knew this might happen again, the money spent on stopping floods in Porto Alegre went down from 2021 to 2022. And in 2023, it wasn’t even in the budget. At the state level, only 0.2% of the budget for 2024 is for dealing with disasters, even though there were lots of problems the year before.
“Floods, maybe not as bad as this, but still with a lot of water, have happened in Porto Alegre in recent years,” Cortês says. “This was a totally unusual situation, a record situation, but because of climate change, it might happen again unfortunately.”
Forced to Swim to Stay Alive
When the floods started and there wasn’t enough help from the pros, regular folks stepped up.
One of these helpers was Fabiano Saldanha, a 48-year-old businessman from Porto Alegre. He used his jet ski to rescue people who were stuck in their houses.
“It was mostly us regular folks, the volunteers, who were saving people,” Saldanha says. “It was neighbors helping neighbors.”
He joined up with other volunteers and organized teams with jet skis and small boats. They went through narrow and debris-filled streets to reach the trapped people. Saldanha didn’t see his family for 10 days while he was helping out.
“I kept saying, ‘No one gets left behind,'” he remembered. He thought the authorities had a hard time handling the disaster at first.
“They wanted to help — the fire department, Civil Defense, the police — but it was a bit slow because of all the rules,” he told CNN. “I think they needed better planning and organization.”
Even when the authorities told people to leave, some didn’t listen, thinking the water wouldn’t reach them.
“I was one of those people,” Pitana admitted. “My mom, dad, and daughter left early, and they wanted me to go with them, but I said I’d stay.”
During the night, her house started to flood. First, water came in through the bathroom. Then, it rose very quickly.
“We got scared,” she said, talking about herself and her husband. “We tied up some furniture, closed doors, and then we left. Outside, the water was already up to our chests.”
She showed CNN a photo of her in the water, holding onto her dog with a packed bag hanging on her fence to keep it dry, just before she had to leave.
Two young men rescued her and an older neighbor with a rowboat, but it was too small for her husband to come too.
“They had a life jacket in the boat, so they gave it to him. He put it on and swam alongside,” she said. “The current was really strong, and the water was very deep, maybe more than 2 meters.”
Pitana cried out for help, but emergency services weren’t around.
Many people in the area have stories similar to Pitana’s. When Lula visited Canoas for the third time since the floods, he tried to calm everyone down by saying, “Everyone who lost their home will get a new one.”
Later, he said he would give support to help about 200,000 people affected by the floods. This support adds up to just over $200 million.
Besides the $10 billion promised to rebuild the state, Brazil wants more help from international groups like the IMF and World Bank.
Cortês thinks both the state and federal governments shouldn’t rush to rebuild quickly. Instead, they should plan carefully for the future and the changing climate.
“The usual thing is to rebuild what was lost. But if we do that, cities will only be as strong as they were before, and that’s not enough,” he said. He thinks there needs to be a serious study of the risks. “Any rebuilding plan has to think about making cities strong enough to handle these extreme weather events.”
Pitana isn’t thinking too much about the future right now. She’s just focused on the present, dealing with her new life. But she hopes the authorities will do what they can to stop this kind of disaster from happening again.
“I think, given how bad this was, they’ll do something — they have to,” she said. “We don’t want to think about it, but this will happen again.”
CNN’s Mary Gilbert helped with this report.