Thousands of residents of the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre spent the weekend desperately seeking shelter from the unprecedented floods that have already caused at least 79 deaths in southern Brazil.
With the level of the Guaíba River at historic highs, 6,000 residents of the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, with a population of 1.3 million, packed the minimum necessary, left their homes and moved to one of the public shelters in the city, while thousands of others went to the homes of relatives or friends.
An annex of the Grêmio stadium, Porto Alegre's main soccer club, served as makeshift accommodation for several days for the family of Marianete Silva, a 49-year-old domestic worker, after the neighborhood where she lives was flooded.
Despite being grateful for the help provided by the volunteers, Silva said that her son had bronchitis and that he needed to leave the stadium as soon as possible to another place with better care and that guaranteed basic hygiene.
“We have to go to a shelter to take a bath... We have already lost everything and we are still going to lose our dignity,” he told EFE, before pointing out that the Army had promised to transfer them, but had not yet done so after several hours of waiting.
Among the volunteers helping at the stadium was Adriano, a 51-year-old truck driver who saw everything that was happening on television and decided with several members of his family to buy bread for those affected. “It's the least we can do... We are finding hungry people who haven't eaten well for two or three days,” he told EFE, his voice breaking with emotion.
With four of the six water treatment stations not working, 70% of the city is without supply, which is why the mayor, Sebastião Melo, said at a press conference that “not a drop can be lost.”
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, traveled to Rio Grande do Sul this Sunday, his second visit since the floods began a week ago, and promised that there will be no bureaucratic “impediments” to sending aid.
In a show of institutional unity in the face of the crisis, Lula arrived accompanied by most of his Government, as well as the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Pacheco and Arthur Lira, who promised speed in the processing of bills. law to address the crisis.
Lula said he was praying for the rain to stop in the state and marked as priorities the mobilization of public health to “minimize the suffering” of the population, the recovery of blocked roads, and the return of children to schools.
After ten days in which it rained the equivalent of three entire months in Rio Grande do Sul, the intensity of the precipitation decreased throughout the weekend and there were even moments of sunshine. At the same time, the level of the Guaíba River stabilized this Sunday after exceeding five meters, and the Porto Alegre City Council expects it to remain at that mark for the next two days.
Despite the improvement in the climate, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, warned that the level of the rivers “will take time to decrease” and that the number of victims can still increase “a lot” due to landslides. .
Apart from the dead, there are 105 missing and more than 134,000 displaced throughout the state, according to the latest balance released on Sunday afternoon.
