RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The landslides that swept through Petrópolis this week toppled homes and tore families apart, left their trail on hillsides and hearts, and left at least 136 dead and more than 200 missing.
And it was all largely predictable and, to some extent, avoidable.
Rapid urbanization, poor planning and a lack of financing for subsidized housing have plagued this mountain city in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. Little has been done in response to repeated warnings about the risks of building on the slopes, current and former researchers and officials told The Associated Press.
And given the evidence that climate change is causing more intense rains, the danger has only increased, and not only in Petrópolis.
More than 1,500 people have died in similar landslides in recent decades in that part of the Sierra del Mar. In Petrópolis alone, more than 400 people have lost their lives as a result of strong storms since 1981.
Antônio Guerra, a geography professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, has been studying meteorological catastrophes in Petrópolis for almost 30 years. He has visited dozens of places where mudflows have engulfed homes and lives, and has investigated the root causes.
“Rain is the great villain, but the main cause is the misuse of the land. There is a total lack of planning,” Guerra said in a telephone interview.
The uncontrolled growth of Petrópolis is recent. Nestled in the mountains about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Rio de Janeiro and named after a former Brazilian emperor, the city was one of the first in the country with urban planning.
The first settlers built stately homes along its waterways. But in recent decades, its prosperity has attracted people from poorer areas and its population has grown to around 300,000. The hillsides are now covered with small huddled houses, built by people who are not fully aware of the dangers. Many have been built without the proper permits because their owners cannot afford to live elsewhere.
Many high-risk areas are even more vulnerable due to deforestation or inadequate drainage, Guerra said. Over time, people forget about disasters and return to devastated areas, building on unsafe land.
For almost two decades, Yara Valverde headed the local office of the federal environmental regulator. In 2001, he launched the first hydrogeological risk alert system by installing plastic bottles in communities to collect rainwater. When a certain level was reached, the sirens would activate.
The program had no public funding, so it recruited volunteers.
Between 2007 and 2010, Guerra and a team of civil engineers and geologists mapped the risk zones in Petrópolis and sent their findings to the city. The following January, the heavy rains caused landslides that left nearly 1,000 dead, 71 of them in Petrópolis. It was considered the worst natural disaster in the history of Brazil.
The city has acknowledged the problem. In 2017, the authorities pointed out that 18% of the city, including some 20,000 homes, was at somewhat or very high risk. Another 7,000 people should also be relocated, according to a plan developed by the city that required the construction of affordable housing and the suspension of works in risk areas.
Guerra, Valverde, non-governmental organizations and residents maintain that little has been done to carry it out.
In Petrópolis there is little space available for safe newly built housing, and removing residents from their homes is a politically unpopular move as there is often no place to relocate them nearby. Even before the pandemic hit the local economy, the state of Rio was trying to recover from a devastating three-year recession.
But the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, citing official data, reported that the regional government spent less than half of the funds earmarked for its disaster prevention and response program.
The state Secretary of Construction and Infrastructure explained in an email to The Associated Press that inspections of risk areas, housing policy and relocations are the responsibility of the city.
Petrópolis did not respond to repeated requests for information about the number of families relocated since 2017 and the other steps taken to carry out the plan.
The country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, tried to dodge blame by stating that the budget for preventive measures is limited. “Many times we have no way of protecting ourselves against everything that can happen,” he said Friday in Petrópolis, responding to widespread outrage.
Heavy rains are common in the region, especially between December and March, coinciding with the southern summer. But with climate change, rainfall seems to be getting heavier, according to experts.
Southeastern Brazil has been hit by heavy rains since the beginning of the year, with more than 40 deaths in landslides recorded in the Minas Gerais region in January and in Sao Paulo days later that same month. This came after months of drought — the country’s worst in 90 years — that caused the level of reservoirs in the southeast to fall so low as to raise possible rationing.
“They are all extreme weather events that occur very close to each other. Climate change also acts by increasing the frequency of these phenomena, and we are observing it clearly,” explained Marcelo Seluchi, coordinator of the government’s National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts. “It is not about looking at a specific phenomenon. but to the whole.
On the eve of the latest landslide, the Seluchi center sent a “very high” risk alert for Petrópolis, warning of rains with “the potential to cause a great impact on the population.” The agency recommended that authorities consider evacuating the risk areas.
The next day, 10 inches (25.9 centimeters) of rain fell in just three hours, by far the worst since 1932, according to the center.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Rio Governor Claudio Castro insisted the deluge was “totally unpredictable.” He did not comment on whether the destruction and deaths could have been prevented.
Eighteen of Petrópolis’ 20 warning sirens sounded ahead of Tuesday’s deadly flash floods, warning residents of imminent danger, but the AP could find no evidence authorities ordered evacuations.
Some residents told the AP that they had received text messages from authorities warning them of the storm. Others said they received no notice. And with most of the sirens concentrated in the city center, several districts were left out.
The city did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press.
According to Fernando Araújo, 46, the government has ignored his Vila Felipe neighborhood for as long as he can remember.
“As a resident who has lived here for 46 years, I am sure that when the sun rises and the weather stabilizes, they will not come to pay attention to us anymore. People, on their own, will clean things up, rebuild, and at some point in the future, this will happen again,” he said.
According to Valverde, in many cities in the region there is a lack of political will to face the problem.
“They say they are concerned, but when the time comes to make decisions, to remove houses from risk areas, to prevent new works… they end up giving in,” he said.
“They have to take responsibility. If not, this will repeat itself over and over again,” she noted.
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Associated Press writers Diarlei Rodrigues in Petrópolis and Débora Alvares in Brasilia contributed to this report.
