Until the next rains flood our streets and flood our lives

by Andrea
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This is not a climate surprise, but an accumulated neglect, as if the calendar had not warned, the alerts had not been issued and science did not warn

Luciano Martins/Act Press/Estadão Content
Flooding in streets of the city of Canoas, in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre

Finishing dry winter, the first storms will come marking the next season and, with them, the old scenes will be repeated in newspaper and TV images. The sky collapsing, the city standing, destroyed lives. Booia on the avenues like leaves, the asphalt turns into a current that, having nowhere to go, invades houses, shops, schools, markets and drowning them. Scared screams mingle with the noise of the water that rises inclessment without license, following the natural way that geography, inconsequentially altered by men, imposed the waters. There is always a new video, a desperate account, an improvised shelter – a ritual hypernaturalized by the systematic repetition of facts that no longer surprises anyone else.

What really amazes is not the strength of, but our persistent lack of preparation. As if the calendar had not warned, as if the alerts had not been issued, as if science did not warn, as if the problem were not wide open at the door of each street without clean manhole, on each slope without containment, in each stream suffocated by the concrete. We flooded, wept, promise, forget. And then, it all starts again.

This is not a climate surprise, but an accumulated neglect. The investment in urban drainage and rainwater capture was being postponed, replaced by punctual solutions and pushed to the next management. It is no use to postpone, because the water that falls from the sky does not expect calendar. The account arrives. To everyone.

Breaks the tile of Dona Diva’s kitchen, drags the stock of the small market of the corner, paralyzes bus, subway, delivery, child does not arrive at school. The damage adds into silence and the noise comes later, in an attempt to blame the mood, fate, bad luck. Pray nor resolve.

But it’s not just the flooding periphery, destroying lives. Recent floods have not shown that when nature overflows, it charges its geographical place, there is no zip code to save. We see submerged whole neighborhoods, families on roofs, buildings of all kinds, be banks, museums, municipalities, factories, all evacuated without distinction of class, age, profession, trying to save what can or just survive.

And then the image that remains: an isolated horse on a roof. The city submerged in the background. Do you remember expensive readers? The flood carried everything but that tense, standing body, which expected, alone, between the gray sky and the barrenty water for days, immovable. It became a symbol of our neglect, of improvisation as politics, the urgency that only comes when it is too late.

Meanwhile, the rivers are no longer rivers. They were channeled, covered, suffocated. The forest that one day filtered the water became parking lot. The sidewalks that should absorb, reflect. Cities have lost their ability to breathe. They became harsh, impermeable surfaces, unable to deal with what should be natural: rain. Missing action. Lack prevention. And lack political will.

“Investment in resilience is a matter related to the priority of the political agenda,” said a state governor. The phrase, let go in the midst of chaos, expose the problem: while the priority does not change, the tragedy repeats itself. Requalifying drainage infrastructure, creating rain gardens, expanding vegetated areas, resuming green on the banks of the streams, all this is possible. The solutions are various, but it requires planning and continuity to face the immediacy that governs our public decisions.

Urban resilience is not done with backhoe the next day. It is done first: with laws that work, unoccupied risk zones, credit for those who want to adapt their home, integration between housing, mobility, environment. The city needs to develop resilience and ability to adapt to inevitable climate consequences. And this begins by recognizing that delaying solutions only brings us closer to disaster

Because if we change nothing, we will continue to clean the mud of our furniture and our mistakes.
Until the next rains flood our streets.
And they flood our lives.

*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the young Pan.

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