As the water level rose rapidly inside the home he shares with his 70-year-old mother and three other relatives. Vieira Lima rushed to save any piece of furniture or belongings he could,although he figured he would have another chance.
“I thought we would come back after the rain went down — but we couldn’t,” the 35-year-old gas station attendant said.
As he watched,his home gave way to a torrent of rubble.
Since then,Vieira Lima and his family have been camped in his sister’s house as they try to recover from the trauma. “It was very sad,very hard,” he said. “I’ve never seen something like this.”
The situation grew even more dire over the Christmas weekend after the extreme rain led to the collapse of two dams. The first burst in Vitória da Conquista,in the southern part of the state,on Saturday night,and the second Sunday morning 200 kilometres north,in Jussiape.
“There are more than 116 municipalities in a state of emergency,” said Valmir Assunção,a Brazilian congressman from Bahia. “The rains destroyed bridges,roads and houses in our state.”
Natalie Unterstell,president of Institute Talanoa,a climate policy think tank in Brazil,pointed out that the latest United Nation report offered “robust evidence” that such weather extremes were the result of climate change.
“The warming of the ocean is particularly relevant to this,” she said. “In 2020,data showed that 80 per cent of the seas suffered maritime heat waves,and this boosted disasters such as the one in Bahia.”
Unterstell urged governments like that of Brazil to take climate change into account when rebuilding. “Brazil is built to a climate that no longer exists,” she said.
On Tuesday,Assunção and other lawmakers met to push for financial resources to rebuild the region. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced an emergency allotment of aid equivalent to $US35 million ($48 million).
In mid-December,when the rains began,Bolsonaro flew over some of the hard-hit areas. But on Monday,as the rains peaked,he headed to the southern region of the country for the holiday. He is expected to return to Bahia early in the New Year.
“I hope I don’t need to come back earlier,” Bolsonaro told a supporter on Monday after the dams collapsed,speaking from the sands of Forte beach,in São Francisco do Sul,local media reported.
The President has been criticised on social media for taking time off during the crisis.
“While our people suffer from hunger,unemployment,inflation,epidemics and natural disasters as in Bahia,Bolsonaro took vacations!” Randolfe Rodrigues,an opposition senator,said on Twitter. “Yes! Oblivious to all this,he thought he deserved a break,as a big joke with the Brazilian people.”
The flooding may also hamper Brazil’s fight against the pandemic. Costa said a few cities in Bahia had lost all their supplies of drugs and vaccines against COVID-19.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.