President Jair Bolsonaro flew over today (1st) areas affected by the rains of the last few days in Greater São Paulo. Floods and landslides caused 24 deaths across the state.
After the overflight, the president regretted the tragedy and placed the federal government at the disposal of the affected municipalities. “We are present with six ministers. We also present to mayors to show what we can do. Because we are willing to alleviate people’s suffering. We regret the deaths,” he said at a press conference in Francisco Morato.
Bolsonaro also highlighted that since the beginning, the situation of the municipalities affected by the rains has been monitored by the National Secretariat of Civil Defense. According to the president, the government will seek to make resources available as the municipalities present the needs of each municipality. “The mayors present their needs and we will do everything possible to meet them”, he emphasized.
The Minister of Regional Development, Rogério Marinho, who accompanied the president on the trip to São Paulo, said that the federal government’s priority is to welcome the victims of the rains. “This moment is one of solidarity with the families who had victims, of welcoming people who are homeless and of working together with the state government and with the municipalities, with organized civil society to face these occurrences”, he said.
In the coming weeks, according to the minister, ways to make preventive works against new disasters in the region will be studied. “We are committed to the mayors that we will be in the next 15 days talking to the local governments about lines of financing and structuring works of greater magnitude”.
Despite recognizing the problem of precarious housing as aggravating the difficulties faced with the storms, Marinho said that such a large volume of rainfall would be a problem even in cities with consolidated infrastructure. “Drop 300 or 400 millimeters of water in a restricted period in a certain region, I don’t think even New York will take it”, he compared.
For the minister, the situation is similar to that faced in other states. “We are living in a period in which what has rained in the south of Bahia, in the north of Minas Gerais, was unprecedented in the last 30 years”, he added.
In addition to the infrastructure minister, the holder of Citizenship, João Roma, also offered support to the affected people. “Our role is to welcome people. We have to be careful with those people who lost everything they had”, he said, about the social assistance actions that will be offered.
