Brazil floods raise specter of climate migration
STORY: For the third time in seven months, Brazilian businessman Cassiano Baldasso had to remove wheelbarrows of mud from his home in Mucum, a small town 90 miles upriver from Porto Alegre.
The ongoing flooding in Southern Brazil is forcing some of the half million displaced residents to consider uprooting their lives to higher grounds.
The catastrophe could become one of Brazil’s biggest cases of climate migration in recent history.
"During the first flood, I opened (the house), looked, closed, and left. I went from there to my father's house crying. I have never cried in my life, never, for anything, this time I cried. Your whole life is there, the 50 years I worked are there, and all the comfort I could give myself is there. Then you see things going downhill."
Baldasso had already saved his family in September by climbing onto the roof of their two-story house until they were rescued by the fire brigade in the middle of the night.
He says he has had enough.
Mayor of Mucum said the town's 5,000 residents will have to relocate. His office is planning to rebuild 40% of the town elsewhere.
Researchers estimated that nearly 1,500 square miles of land were flooded.
That's more than the urban footprint of the Washington DC metro area.
The record devastation in Rio Grande do Sul follows floods in the second half of last year.
Many of the 538,000 people now displaced from their homes have to consider more extreme adaptations.
Mari Venancio's house was swept away and she lost everything. This month, the rented house she had moved to had flooded up to 5 feet deep. She fears it is time to leave Muçum.
"My God. I'm going to be very honest with you. I think that in the future Mucum will become a river, because this flood took a lot of land, left a lot of sand, and took a lot of trees, so, really, I think that it will be difficult to live here.”
The location of Southern Brazil at the meeting point of tropical and polar currents has caused more frequent severe droughts and heavy rains as a result of climate change – according to scientists.
Environmental experts warn that certain towns in the state have no choice but to move entire neighborhoods to different locations.
Governor Eduardo Leite has said initial calculations show Rio Grande do Sul will need at least $3.7 billion to rebuild from the disaster.
