Massive floods in Brazil cut off a million people from the world, gangs took advantage

In Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, flooding has cut off more than a million people from the rest of the world. Five out of six city water purifiers are out of order, so around 80% of the city’s residents do not have access to drinking water. According to estimates, up to 155,000 people lost their homes, reports the BBC and the Reuters agency.

One of the women living in the capital said that people here had “never experienced anything like this”. “There are thousands of people who have lost their homes. Now we still don’t have water anywhere,” she told the BBC.

In addition, the work of humanitarian and rescue teams is made more difficult by criminal groups that have taken advantage of the situation and are stealing boats and robbing undamaged houses.

Photo: Reuters

The floods affected the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Over the past year, floods have hit the largest South American country for the fourth time. The previous three claimed a total of 75 lives. The current ones in the south of the country are by far the most destructive.

According to the Brazilian Geological Survey, they are even stronger than the memorable flood of 1941. In some places, the water level reached the highest level since the beginning of the 150-year-old records.

The local governor warned on Wednesday that the torrential rains, which have stopped for now, are set to continue this week. Climatologists attribute the extreme rainfall in Rio Grande do Sul to the concurrence of several phenomena.

On the one hand, heat waves caused by the El Niño phenomenon, which warms the waters of the Pacific and brings rain to southern Brazil, then weaker cold fronts with rain and gales coming from Antarctica, and finally unusual heat in the Atlantic, which also increases humidity, Reuters reported.

What is El Niño?

The phenomena of El Niño and La Niña are opposite climatic phenomena that alternate, while neither of them may be active in the intervening periods. El Niño is the warm phase of the combined El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, La Niña is the cold phase of ENSO. This climate phenomenon is caused by the interaction between the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean, during which a warm current from the equatorial regions affects the weather around the world.

El Niño generally causes drier conditions in Australia and Southeast Asia and wetter and warmer conditions in the Americas.