Moisés Waismann, Rute Henrique da Silva Ferreira, Lucimar Fátima Siqueira and Paula Pinhal de Carlos*
The month of May 2024 will not pass as just another page of rain in the calendar of Rio Grande do Sul. It is etched in the flesh and in the collective memory as the moment when theclimate crisisceased to be an abstract threat and revealed itself in all its socio-environmental violence. Recent data from the Special Flood Survey (PEERS/IBGE), systematized by the Unilasalle Observatory, reveal the X-ray of devastation in the Porto Alegre Intermediate Region: of the 1.38 million households there, 92.7% (1,280,502 residences) suffered some direct or indirect impact from the tragedy.
The observation of the numbers reveals the systemic nature of the disaster. The water not only flooded houses; it paralyzed infrastructure, dismantled public services, and exposed the vulnerability to which the population is subjected. More than a million homes saw the disappearance of potable water from the taps and electricity from the outlets. Communication networks collapsed and public transport ground to a halt.
However, the disaster affected everyone, and the pain and ability to respond were not distributed equally. It is necessary to name what the data reveals: trauma has class, color, and gender.
With a population of over 3.7 million people in the scope of the analysis, the survey shows that women represent the majority of those affected (1.94 million). Historically responsible for managing family and community care, they were the first to reorganize life in improvised shelters and to establish networks of solidarity in the chaos. The disaster also severely affected children and adolescents (733,000) and the elderly (712,000) experienced the sudden loss of their territories, routines, and security references.
The trail ofthe socioclimatic eventmainly reveals the failures of governance and the slowness of the State. At least 538,000 families had to leave their homes for at least one night to escape the rising waters, and more than 610,000 people changed their address during the crisis. However, while more than 221,000 homes needed urgent reconstruction or resettlement due to being destroyed or severely damaged, the emergency financial aid from the public sector reached only 362,000 households. This means that approximately 73.5% of the homes in the region were deprived of financial assistance during the most critical period.
This gap in social protection directly affects the well-being ofthe working classAlmost 1.5 million residents reported a drastic decline in the family's ability to cover basic monthly expenses – a direct result of the rising cost of living, the paralysis of informal work, and the forced replacement of essential goods lost in the flood.
The impact also extended to what cannot be measured in square meters of masonry. There are also the psychological marks left. The trauma of rescue, the fear of the return of the rain, and the uncertainty of the future have created a mental health epidemic. To worsen the situation, public communication has failed: more than 2.1 million residents have declared that they are unaware of any preventive measures adopted by the State to prevent new tragedies, and the majority have rejected the recovery works carried out in the affected areas.
This reality serves not only to document the past; they also serve as an urgent warning for the present. The climate crisis is not an "unpredictable natural event," but a process amplified by political choices, lack of urban planning, and the deterioration of protection and drainage networks.
Rebuilding Rio Grande do Sul cannot mean rebuilding the same fragile structures in the same high-risk areas, nor should it normalize the fact that the cost of climate adaptation is borne by the most vulnerable. It requires a reconstruction guided by climate justice, where the right to decent housing, tomental health... to sanitation and transparent information be guaranteed as a central state policy — and not merely as a temporary emergency measure that recedes along with the river levels.
*Moisés Waismann, Rute Henrique da Silva Ferreira e Paula Pinhal de Carlos: professors and researchers at La Salle University.
**Lucimar Fátima Siqueira: researcher at La Salle University.
***This is an opinion piece and does not necessarily represent the editorial line ofBrasil do Fato.