Southern Brazil is currently experiencing what is probably the worst flood disaster in decades. 1.4 million people are affected. A piece of German immigration history also sank in the floods.
There was nothing more that could be done: hour by hour the water rose higher, first covering the street and then the parking lot. The muddy brown liquid flowed under the glass doors into the lobby, from there into the exhibition hall and then up the stairs. Wooden step by wooden step covered centuries of German immigration history.
History Museum under water
“Ancient musical instruments, historical costumes, agricultural equipment or the printing presses of the first newspaper here. All objects that tell of the German colonization of the region,” says Rodrigo Luis dos Santos. The historian heads the history museum of São Leopoldo, a city of 200,000 inhabitants in the greater Porto Alegre area.
It officially bears the title “Cradle of German Immigration” because the first settlers arrived here on July 25th exactly 200 years ago, including Rodrigo’s ancestors: the Kochs. Like thousands, they fled the impoverished Hunsrück to southern Brazil to build a new life there.
Extreme rainfall
This heritage, too, now lies under mud-brown floods that have buried a third of the entire city. There is hardly a single resident who is not affected; 40,000 houses were completely destroyed. “The situation is dramatic, it has never rained so much here,” says Mayor Ary Vanazzi in a video conversation from the emergency shelter – there was 600 mm of rain in 48 hours.
Only the attic of his house sticks out of the water. The city, which has already experienced several floods, has had a good protection system since the mid-1960s: “Built with German technology, financed by the German government,” said the mayor. After all, the city on the Rio Sinos River maintains close connections to Germany.
The government was actually in the middle of preparing for the 200th anniversary of German immigration history, but then the problem came: “The system could no longer cope with it.”
Access roads are impassable
Vanazzi is already in his fourth term in office, but he has never experienced anything like this. He now has to worry about broken dikes, destroyed bridges, desperate neighbors. The access roads are impassable.
São Leopoldo is running on emergency power and gasoline is running out. People rely on drinking water and food deliveries. “There is a lot of solidarity, the government is also helping,” says the mayor, “but what happens next? What does that do to our city as we knew it before, what to the people?”
More than 100 dead
It is the worst flood in southern Brazil. 1.4 million people in more than 425 towns are affected, and according to civil defense, at least 107 people have died so far. But the number continues to rise because many are still missing.
Even the historic center of the metropolis of Porto Alegre is under water, streets have become rivers, the football stadium has become a large lake. And communication with many communities in the surrounding area has been lost. And civil defense issued new severe weather warnings for the weekend: In addition to new rainfall, there is also the risk of strong winds and hail.
The large city of Porto Alegre is also largely under water.
Help from the air and over water
Meanwhile, 1,500 kilometers further north, in Rio de Janeiro, marines are loading food, medicine, water and off-road vehicles into the belly of the “Atlantico”, the longest military ship in Latin America. A few hours later it heads south. It is the first of several trips, says Rear Admiral Nelson Leite: “The scale of this operation is in direct proportion to the scale of this unprecedented tragedy that is unfolding in Rio Grande do Sul.”
The state’s governor, Eduardo Leite, spoke of “scenes like those in war.” A real Marshall Plan is needed for reconstruction.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks of a climate catastrophe: He called on the authorities to work more preventatively in the future in order to reduce the effects of extreme weather events. “We have to stop chasing misfortune. We have to see in advance what misfortunes could happen so that we can work.” The president has already visited the region twice and promised help – the images from his overflights are apocalyptic.
Large parts of São Leopoldo are completely flooded and the destruction is immense.
Many settlements in risk areas
Ecologist Marcelo Dutra da Silva from the University of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, who warned of increasing rainfall in 2022, says: “It was foreseeable that this risk existed.” The vast majority of communities do not have protection plans for climate disasters.
On the contrary: many settlement areas are located in depressions and valleys, near bodies of water, and that needs to change. “We may have to relocate entire towns,” says Dutra da Silva. “We have to understand that the climatic changes threaten us and adapt.”
Lots of extreme weather
Brazil has repeatedly suffered from extreme weather such as heat waves and heavy rain in recent months. Experts say global warming is causing such events to become more frequent and intense. However, the weather extremes are currently being intensified by the climate phenomenon El Niño.
We will have to start over, says German-born museum historian Rodrigo Luis dos Santos, like the German settlers who came here 200 years ago.