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

11/25/08

I´ll write about the weather soon

11/23/08

Well Santa Catarina is a state of emergency from all the rain. Yesterday it poured all day except for a few hours. Streets here were flooded like a foot deep. In other towns roads, houses, and hills are washing away. You can´t even use an umbrella because the wind is so bad it breaks. We couldnt really leave the house yesterday except for a couple hours. We went back to pizza planet and had pizza buffett. The road flooded while we were eating like 2 feet deep. it was crazy, i took some pictures today, i will get them up for you soon.

11/21/08

Big storm, lots of rain. I am making plans to leave probably in a couple weeks, idk

11/19/08

Boring. It´s raining, shocking huh? Supposed to rain the rest of the week, awesome. I got to see some old pictures of my dad today, hopefully i´ll put some up soon. Finally, all better today. I went for a walk tonight, on the beach. Wasn´t as breath taking as you might imagine. It was so windy i thought my umbrella was going to break. Still cool though. I am still way freaked out about seeing all these drug deals with barely no attemt to conceal what it is they are doing. and me like a dumbass keeps looking. Crack heads with a lack of paranio, i dont know what this is going to do to my tweaker-dar. Someone should send this to Linda, incase she hasn´t seen it yet. I dont have her email. and please send me her email too.

11/16/08-11/18/08

So i either got a stomach flu or food poisoning, but it was 24 hours of not fun. Really a lot of not fun. I was in bed crying for my mommy. All I saw for a whole day was bed and bathroom. Nothing like the fear of it never going away to make you miss home. Today it is sunny again, but not warm enough to swim and i´m pretty weak still anyway. I think i´ve probably comsumed only 200-300 calories in the last 48 hours. I feel a lot better now though. Whew. I figured out casting on and starting my hat, which makes me very happy. I just learned how to close it up and keep on going so i am excited to get home and work on that. So, as you probably assumed, not much to report. I did have some interesting dreams... the night i got sick i dreamed this big story about why i got sick and it was all part of this politcal plot and i was mistakenly poisoned(I think i had that dream cause i watched zorro 2 days in a row) and then last night i dreamed that I was hanging out with obama at a party and he was hitting on me and i was like, damn he´s kinda hot, I get monica lewinski now, but thank goodness nothing happened, but he wasnt wearing a shirt for some reason. Anyway then i was talking to my dad, but my dad was george bush, like literally, the president george w. and i asked him what i should do for a career cause i really want to go to grad school and he said grad school is for suckers and then he paused and said i should be a teacher. I got all happy and said thats kinda one thing i was considering. Then he left and i stole his truck , then realized i stole his truck and went to call him, but i only had my real dad´s phone number, not his...then i dont remember what happened. Weird huh? K bye and I am not pregnant regardless of what you may have heard from Anne the nurse or Bill.

11/15/08-the beach

OMG this place is awesome, I love it, I never want to go home! It is hot out, 85 with 80something % humidity, but we went swimming today! It was so awesome. 5 min walk to the beach, set our stuff down and into the water we went. It is some kind of holiday here and lots and lots of people were out. I put on a ton of sun screen and reapplied often, I don’t think I burned today. Sonia and I went out into the waves and swam and dived and splashed. My eyes burn from the salt, so does my mouth and my skin. My hair is all chunky and gross, but it feels awesome. I still feel like I’m in the waves, up and down. The water is so warm and it was so hot out that breeze felt good. Running after the waves and into them was more of a work out than I thought it was at the time, but my legs are sore now. Tomorrow if it’s nice I am going to go to a better beach with less people and cooler scenery. Summer is here, I’m told. Now I get it. It was so much fun! Happy month away from home to me!

Random things I keep forgetting to mention. A guy in Buenos aires laughed at me cause I talk like the movies. Shit, there is like 3 more, but I can’t remember them now. I still miss my ipod. And everyone at home. I took out my nose ring, a small volcano looking thing was growing next to it, so I dont think my nose was happy it was there. It wasnt me anyway. Hope things are going good.