Santa Catarina

The flood
The state of Santa Catarina is still in a state of emergency as rains continue to fall on this already hyper-saturated land. Excessive rains have accumulated over the last 2 months causing the floods and devastations you can see still today, almost a week after disaster struck. In Itajai, a city that was drowning in 10 feet of water, is now facing problems of looting, vandalism, death, further illness caused by contamination, and no way to clean up the piles of sludge and mud left in the streets. Thousands of people are without homes. Some people have no homes to even return to. Those fortunate enough to have a 2 story home that still stands, must stand guard in unhealthy and unsafe conditions to keep their property safe from scavengers and thieves. Itajai, also lost a major roadway to a landslide as well as other cities such as Blumenau. 10s of thousands of people are without running water and those that do have running water are being warned of contamination and are advised to report for medical treatment if they develop any symptoms like diarrhea or headache after consuming water. Over 100 men, women and children are dead. Many washed down hills along with their homes, trapped in the rubble. You saw things of their homes in pictures taken from the beach in my previous post. A dresser, a kitchen table, an easy chair, a library of books all once belonging to numerous families caught in the worst of what has befallen the people of Santa Catarina. The smell in the air when you walk on the street is telling of the state of things. It smells rotten and dirty everywhere. On the beach animals lay dead from eating what has washed up or the animals themselves were caught up in the water and washed up in the sand and people are swimming in the water and laying a towel down to sun on the sand. For 2 days the water in the little bay was red-orange from all the clay from the hills flowing down in the rivers. The day before these horrid events unfolded I was driven around through some of the towns hit the worst. I didn’t have my camera with me, but the rain was pounding. The beaches were washing out, some roads were starting to wear and part of a hill slid off onto the road closing access to the port of itajai. We went home that night commenting on the intense rain. While we were eating dinner 2 feet of water accumulated in a side street next to the pizza planet. We drove up to the beach to make sure my dad wasn’t caught in the storm. All the manhole covers for the city drains were spewing water. It was surging up through the pools in the street. We didn’t find my dad out there, he was safe at home. We stopped to buy drinking water to have some in the house. We had a hard time finding a place to park that wasn’t a river in the gutter spilling a few feet over on the sidewalk and in the road. We went through another couple feet of filthy water to get into the garage of the building. Happy to be home we had no idea of the destruction that was taking place just a mile from our house. We didn’t know until the next day, but several homes and businesses in our area were underwater. In neighboring cities mudslides had trapped people from leaving and people and homes were being taken away into the water to the rivers and out to the ocean. Itajai is a big city with a university and working areas that were underwater for days. The rescue operations are immense. Supplies are being brought in now that the roads are open again. We only lost water for 2 days, most people are still without. Watching the news here is grim as the rain continues to fall and no one knows how bad it’s going to end up or if the end is even in sight. We were lucky to be this close to the beach, the water didn’t get trapped here, it ran out to the ocean. Everything is on hold for so many people. Lives lost and destroyed. They show people crying in the street. Peoples pets that survived roam the streets. I see parakeets and other pet birds flying around. People set them free so they could live or their homes were stuck by the moving earth and they made it out ok. People of all socioeconomic levels were affected, the very poor that lived in shacks on the side of a hill to the rich people that lived in affluent neighborhoods atop the hill. The president of brazil came and flew over these towns in a helicopter. The military is here helping and so are many churches. I hope that the worst is over I’m sorry for those that were hurt and still suffer. News article about the flooding click here