Brazil’s floods smashed through barriers designed to keep them out, trapping water in for weeks — and exposing social woes
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/19/climate/brazil-floods-social-problems-intl/index.html
by cnn
Brazil’s floods smashed through barriers designed to keep them out, trapping water in for weeks — and exposing social woes
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/19/climate/brazil-floods-social-problems-intl/index.html
by cnn
2 comments
Karine Pitana had just paid off the last installment on her new couch [when floods tore through her hometown of Canoas ](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/weather/brazil-flooding-satellite-imagery-intl/index.html)in southern Brazil nearly two weeks ago. It was just a piece of furniture, but for the 42-year-old nurse, there’s a pride in having worked hard for everything she owns.
“It’s very hard, you work, you buy things with such love,” she told CNN, sobbing, from her brother’s home, where she’s now staying. She worries about all the precious things she might lose. “All the priceless mementos, my childhood photos, my daughter’s photos,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
The picture is a little different in Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul. It oozes a rich colonial history in its grand architecture and a sense of luxury in its large marinas. Landing pads for private helicopters are not an uncommon site.
[Weeks of deadly floods triggered by record-smashing rainfall](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/19/climate/brazil-floods-social-problems-intl/index.html) have left parts of southern Brazil in disaster, also laying bare some of the country’s persistent social problems.
Awful