Donate to help the flood efforts: Portuguese, English (click on the link for international donations)

It rained more the double the expected amount for those months in the city. Unable to contain the volume, the river overflowed and the water invaded streets, houses and shops, leaving a trail of destruction and killing hundreds of people.

No, we’re not talking about this year’s tragedy in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, an event that made headlines all around the world. 

This is actually a description of the 1979 flood that happened in Belo Horizonte, my hometown in Brazil. Or we could be talking about the 2011 disaster in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Or the one that happened in the city of Recife in 1966. Or even the flood that invaded São Paulo’s main park in February this year.

The point is – that of the 5 main regions of Brazil, 4 of them suffer from catastrophic floods on a regular basis.

As a reporter, we learned to expect this type of tragedy every summer. It’s already a given that houses and lives will be lost. All over the country, authorities seem stuck in a perpetual reaction mode – after the destruction comes, they announce a series of measures to prevent the next tragedy. When the next tragedy comes, they promise more, and so on.

Add climate change to the mix and it was a matter of time until something of the magnitude of this year’s tragedy happened.

Here are the numbers we’re dealing with in the south of Brazil this month:

• 425 cities affected
• 400,000 people displaced
• 1,9 million people affected
• 107 people dead
• 136 people missing

But why are floods so common in Brazil?

Well, you can blame the tropical weather, at least partially. While in countries like Canada, you have extreme temperatures, in tropical countries like Brazil you have extreme rain volumes. Meaning: it rains a lot in the summer. And by a lot, I mean A LOT.

In the natural environment, rivers in Brazil are known to swell and shrink according to the season, the Amazon River being the most famous example. Between the months of December and May the rivers in the Amazon basin swell and overflow, and between June and November they shrink. This is a natural phenomenon in an environment with so much variability in the rain volume. It happens because it is supposed to happen.

The problem is that having a river with moving margins is not very practical for city builders (there’s a reason why there are no bridges over the Amazon River). So what did the authorities start doing? Artificially channeling the rivers and straightening them.

The city of Belo Horizonte is a great example of this.

The main river in the city, called Arrudas, went from something like this…

to this

And of course, the result is this

Other than artificially channeling the waters, many of the rivers in Belo Horizonte were also completely covered. Not to mention all the asphalt that makes it impossible for the water to sink into the soil, and increases the volume that runs towards the valleys and rivers.

The result is always flood, since the water has to go somewhere.

I don’t know the geographical context of the cities affected by this latest flood in Brazil, but there are already experts pointing out to the excess of asphalt as a contributing factor. Considering that the extreme climate events only tend to get worse from now on, maybe it’s time to consider digging some of those rivers out.

Donate to help the flood efforts: Portuguese, English (click on the link for international donations)