During this Monday (20), part of the residents affected by the damage of the rains in São Sebastião, on the north coast of São Paulo, tried to access the houses in the middle of the mud. The municipality accounts for 39 of the 40 deaths caused by landslides and floods on the north coast. There are 1,700 people displaced and 766 homeless in the region.
In the neighborhood of Topolândia, in São Sebastião, volunteers worked with the support of excavators and trucks to remove mud and debris from the streets. “Today, I spent the whole day removing mud from the alley,” said Carlos José de Santana, who lives with his wife and teenage son in one of the homes affected.
At dawn on Sunday, the family left the residence with water above the knee. According to Carlos, who sells cheese on the beaches for a living, they already suspected that the storm much higher than normal could cause problems. “We didn’t sleep that night. We were worried. It was a lot of water. Lots of water anyway, ”he recalls. The 682 millimeters of rainfall recorded in the region are the highest accumulated in the country’s history.
But not all residents realized the danger in advance. Student Geovana Mandinga, 19, said that, even with the initial signs, the family did not foresee that a landslide would destroy the house where they lived.
“Up there, there is an earth barrier that, with the rain, came down. When I realized it, it was 3am. It was just coming down to earth. It looked peaceful. But I fell asleep and at 6 am I saw a house being taken down, the front house, ”he reports.
When disaster proved imminent, the young woman’s mother, stepfather, four brothers and two baby nephews left the house, taking what little they could carry. “We took some clothes and documents. We had to jump over the neighbors’ wall to get [sair]. We were stranded a few hours before everyone went down”, she says.
Solidarity
Despite being heavily affected by the catastrophe, the family still found space to show solidarity with those in a worse situation. Geovana took the surplus donations she received to a school that is sheltering people who also lost their homes. “Everything that’s left over, that we don’t have where to put it, we’re taking to the social fund. Because there are many families that we know who have lost [tudo] too”, says the young woman, who is temporarily staying with relatives.
During the cleaning work on the neighborhood’s streets, bales of mineral water and food keep arriving, which are organized in houses that were not affected or in makeshift tents, some by churches. “We are trying to help the volunteers and residents up there more. They can’t make food, they don’t have water”, says Raíssa Morais, who has lived in the region for 20 years and is part of one of the groups that organizes donations.
Raíssa, who works as an advisor to a councilor in the municipality, said that she also participated in the mobilization for businessmen and residents of the city to offer support to people affected by the rains. “We started moving, calling one, asking for another. That’s when donations started coming in for us,” she says.
Housemaid Tatiana Pereira da Silva was one of the beneficiaries of donations from the school, which became a shelter. She walked the muddy streets of the neighborhood barefoot. She, her husband and son narrowly escaped the tragedy.
“When I opened the door, the mud was already entering my house. I was desperate. I locked everything and ran away. The mud was already in the middle of the shin when we went down”, she says.
Alerts
Like all the people heard by the Brazil Agencyshe claims not to have received any city hall alert or Civil Defense.
in interview press conference today, the mayor of São Sebastião, Felipe Augusto, said that the municipal administration issued alerts from 9 pm on Saturday, when the rains began in the city. According to him, despite having prior knowledge that the municipality would receive heavy rains, the volume surprised him.
“What was not expected was the density of these rains, which exceeded 600 millimeters in a short period of time. at 3am [de domingo], the Emergency and Contingency Coordination Center was activated. We met at the city hall’s operational center, with the presence of the Fire Department, coordinating all actions and already receiving the first calls for landslides and flooding”, he said.
The National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (Cemaden) reported that local civil defenses were already aware of the risks of an extreme event on the north coast since last Thursday (16).
isolated neighborhoods
Some neighborhoods in the municipality remain isolated due to landslides that hit roads that are essential for people to travel in the region. The area that goes from Barra do Sahy to Boiçucanga can only be accessed by helicopter or by sea. This is how rescues are being carried out and supplies are being sent to people who are isolated in this part of the municipality. The damage is still being assessed, but there are indications that sections of the Rio-Santos and Mogi-Bertioga highways were completely destroyed.
