Bolsonaro goes on holidays as record floods sweep Brazil’s north-east

Rio de Janeiro: At least 21 people have been killed and more than 77,000 driven from their homes by calamitous floods sweeping through north-eastern Brazil.

The power of the waters coursing through the coastal terrain left Brazilians staggered.

“We’ve had other floods, other disasters with deaths, but nothing, absolutely nothing, with this territorial extension, with this number of cities hit at the same time and with the number of people impacted by this storm,” said Rui Costa, governor of Bahia state.

A man carries his dog over floodwaters in Itapetinga, Bahia state, Brazil. Two dams broke Sunday in northeastern Brazil, threatening worse flooding in a rain-drenched region that has already seen thousands forced to flee their homes.Credit: AP

As dams gave way, in some submerged neighbourhoods, rooftops and upper storeys were the only signs left of once-vibrant communities.

Rescue teams used boats and helicopters to gain entry to parts of Ilhéus, Itabuna, Irecê and a hundred other cities in the north-eastern state of Bahia. Neighbouring states sent aircraft and firefighters to help police and members of the armed forces, and volunteers distributed donations of food, mattresses and blankets for the poorest communities.

Like regions large and small across a globe disrupted by climate change, Bahia has been experiencing weather extremes in recent years.

For the past five years, Bahia and its neighbours have suffered from a stubborn drought. But early this month, the skies opened, and for weeks the state has been hit by extraordinary intermittent rainfall. It is the heaviest rainfall for December in the state in three decades, according to Brazil’s centre for monitoring natural disasters.

The waters came for Gerisnon Vieira Lima and his family early one morning about two weeks ago in the city of Guaratinga, in southern Bahia.

As the water level rose rapidly inside the home he shares with his 70-year-old mother and three other relatives. Vieira Lima rushed to save any piece of furniture or belongings he could, although he figured he would have another chance.

“I thought we would come back after the rain went down — but we couldn’t,” the 35-year-old gas station attendant said.

As he watched, his home gave way to a torrent of rubble.

Since then, Vieira Lima and his family have been camped in his sister’s house as they try to recover from the trauma. “It was very sad, very hard,” he said. “I’ve never seen something like this.”

The situation grew even more dire over the Christmas weekend after the extreme rain led to the collapse of two dams. The first burst in Vitória da Conquista, in the southern part of the state, on Saturday night, and the second Sunday morning 200 kilometres north, in Jussiape.

“There are more than 116 municipalities in a state of emergency,” said Valmir Assunção, a Brazilian congressman from Bahia. “The rains destroyed bridges, roads and houses in our state.”

Residents cleaned out their homes in Itapetinga, Brazil, as the flood waters subsided. Credit: AP

Natalie Unterstell, president of Institute Talanoa, a climate policy think tank in Brazil, pointed out that the latest United Nation report offered “robust evidence” that such weather extremes were the result of climate change.

“The warming of the ocean is particularly relevant to this,” she said. “In 2020, data showed that 80 per cent of the seas suffered maritime heat waves, and this boosted disasters such as the one in Bahia.”

Unterstell urged governments like that of Brazil to take climate change into account when rebuilding. “Brazil is built to a climate that no longer exists,” she said.

On Tuesday, Assunção and other lawmakers met to push for financial resources to rebuild the region. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced an emergency allotment of aid equivalent to $US35 million ($48 million).

In mid-December, when the rains began, Bolsonaro flew over some of the hard-hit areas. But on Monday, as the rains peaked, he headed to the southern region of the country for the holiday. He is expected to return to Bahia early in the New Year.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has gone on his summer holiday and will visit the flood zone later. Credit: Getty

“I hope I don’t need to come back earlier,” Bolsonaro told a supporter on Monday after the dams collapsed, speaking from the sands of Forte beach, in São Francisco do Sul, local media reported.

The President has been criticised on social media for taking time off during the crisis.

“While our people suffer from hunger, unemployment, inflation, epidemics and natural disasters as in Bahia, Bolsonaro took vacations!” Randolfe Rodrigues, an opposition senator, said on Twitter. “Yes! Oblivious to all this, he thought he deserved a break, as a big joke with the Brazilian people.”

The flooding may also hamper Brazil’s fight against the pandemic. Costa said a few cities in Bahia had lost all their supplies of drugs and vaccines against COVID-19.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.