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Submerged by flooding, Porto Alegre realizes it was unprepared: 'Everything has to be rebuilt'

Three weeks after being hit by one of the worst climate disasters in its history, which left at least 157 people dead, 88 missing and forced the evacuation of 540,000, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is still partly submerged.

After slipping on her rubber boots, Darcilla Melo Da Silva, 58, took a deep breath before she stepped through the metal gates of her house, guided by her husband, Admar, 68. The scene she had so feared to see for the past 12 days appeared before her eyes. The vegetable garden where she had planted cabbage and herbs to alleviate her severe health problems was buried under a layer of mud. The remains of a white hen lay among the tangled planks, next to her new washing machine, which had been swept into the garden by the current and had ended up crushed under a tree trunk.

The interior of her house, which took her 40 years to furnish, was even more desolate. A smell of rot was pervasive. Without any electricity, Da Silva had to discover the extent of the damage by the light from her husband's smartphone: holes in the roof, raised floor, overturned armchairs... "Everything has to be rebuilt," said the grandmother barely able to breathe.

The retired couple, who lived in the Cidade Baixa district in the west of Porto Alegre, were among the 540,188 people who were forced to evacuate their homes in early May when floodwaters engulfed two-thirds of the towns in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a hilly area on the border with Argentina and Uruguay with a population of some 11 million.

Since April 27, torrential rains have battered the region, raising the level of the Guaiba, a body of water – considered as much a river, lake or estuary – that borders the Porto Alegre metropolitan area, by several meters. On May 6, the day Darcilla Melo Da Silva and Admar evacuated their home, the water level reached 5.3 meters: the most severe flooding since 1941, when the Guaiba had risen to a height of 4.76 meters.

"This extreme event is the result of global warming" aggravated by the El Niño phenomenon, said Francisco Aquino, climatologist and head of the geography department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. As temperatures rise, "we expect them to become more frequent and intense."

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