Record floodings in brazil's south affect thousands

In Brazil, authorities continue facing the aftermath of devastating floods in the southern regions of the country.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:02 Weeks of deadly floods triggered by record-smashing rainfall have left

00:06 part of southern Brazil in disaster. Our Terrestrial correspondent Brian Meir has the details.

00:11 Three weeks after Porto Alegre was hit with its biggest flood in history, not only are dozens of

00:18 city blocks still submerged, but the water levels started rising again on Thursday. During the 1960s

00:24 the local government built a huge flood prevention system, but on the day when the flooding began,

00:29 the public found out that half the pumping stations were inoperable and that some of the

00:33 gates designed to seal the dike system were missing parts and couldn't properly close.

00:38 Porto Alegre has seen its public services severely degraded over the past 20 years,

00:45 destroyed by a governing coalition that believes that the state should be minimal and subordinate

00:50 to the market. In 1973, the Porto Alegre Mayor's Office created an agency called the Ministry of

00:57 Rainwater Drainage. Like the rest of the integrated flood prevention system, it was well funded

01:03 throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. After a right-wing coalition took control of the city

01:08 government in 2005, it began systematically defunding the flood prevention system,

01:14 eliminating the Ministry of Rainwater Drainage completely in 2017.

01:19 We've known for a long time that if this system were properly maintained, it could have easily

01:26 protected us from this flood because it could withstand a 6-meter rise in the river, and the

01:31 highest level it reached this month was 5.33 meters. This flood would not have happened if

01:37 everything was working. Once the flood prevention budget was gutted, current Mayor Sebastien Mello

01:44 began a push for a London-inspired port gentrification project. Ignoring a flood

01:49 November that exposed mechanical failures in pumping station 17, Mayor Mello privatized a

01:55 3-kilometer section of the riverfront this February to real estate developers who promised

02:00 to build fancy restaurants and rip down one kilometer of the flood wall.

02:04 There are much more modern systems than this wall. For example, you can install retractable plates

02:12 that rise automatically during floods. So technology resolves this problem. In fact,

02:17 I think that if we didn't still have this wall, the government would have already worked to solve

02:21 the problem. On Thursday, the Porto Alegre Residents' Association's union filed an impeachment

02:27 motion in city council against Mayor Mello. Brian Meir, tell us, sir, Porto Alegre.