summer rain

Since December of last year, 69 people have died in the state of São Paulo because of the summer rains. It hasn't rained this much in the month of January in São Paulo's metropolitan area in 60 years, the news said today.

It is raining steadily. It is raining in sufficient volume so that areas of the city and the state are flooded. People sometimes have to abandon their cars in the middle of the street due to the elevated water level. The already chaotic traffic of São Paulo intensifies. Men, women, children, dogs get dragged away by the current of the floods and are lucky when they are rescued by strangers nearby. In the most affected areas of the city and the state, houses built on hills are destroyed in devastating mudslides. Whole families get stuck under the destruction, sometimes getting out injured, but alive. Sometimes whole families die.

Between last night and the early hours of today, four people died. Three people from the same family perished in a mudslide, a a 12 year old boy got carried away by the floods.

The saddest part is that people are dying and losing their homes in mudslides because houses were built on illegal sites. Thing is, they have nowhere else to go. And the incorrect disposal of garbage are clogging the city's sewers. There is no clear indication of what the local government is going to do, aside from declaring a state of emergency in the most affected parts of the state.

This morning I woke up and saw that the rain was still here, lightly coming down over the streets. I wondered how much worse it needs to get before someone with power does something.

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