In this tourist city located north of Rio, at least 146 people died and more than 190 others are always missing as a result of the torrential rains that caused, on Tuesday, floods and landslides.
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Antonio Guerra stops in front of the Piabanha River in Petropolis to take pictures of the rails of bridges, torn and twisted by the force of the water. Friday, February 18, three days after the disaster, the scientist visited on the spot to evaluate the magnitude of this new tragedy: he measured the height of the traces of sludge on the walls, noted the mass of sediments in the bed. rivers and he especially questioned the inhabitants.
“Nobody has ever seen a disaster of such magnitude and me either, in thirty years of study here, it is undoubtedly the worst,” says this geographer of the Federal University of Rio , specialist in natural disasters of this mountainous region, located 68 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro.
Tuesday, February 15, it rained, in three hours, 259.8 millimeters of rain, or 259.8 liters per square meter, the largest volume ever recorded in the city since 1932 and the first statements of the Institute since 1932 National Meteorology (INMET). The precipitates were also greater than the 185 millimeters expected for the month of February.
The Piabanha, Quitandinha and Palatinate rivers which serpent at the bottom of the valley where the city was built in 1843, came out of their beds, taking everything over their passage, including buses. Whole sections of the mountains, filled with water, broke off, “becoming an avalanche of rubbish. It brings together everything you can imagine: trees, clay, rock blocks, roofing, slabs, doors, all, and c ‘ is very fast, “commented Antonio Guerra. According to the last assessment this Saturday, February 19, there were twenty-six landslides that caused the death of at least 146 people. More than 190 others are missing.
You have to go up on the hills that surround the city to understand the extent of the damage. In the alleys of the 24-May district, in addition to the mud, huge blocks of stone litters the path where water continues to spill, between rainfall and possible pipes. At the top, in front of the muddy mass, Antonio Guerra releases his geologist’s compass to calculate the inclination of the slope: “55 °! These houses should never have been built here. Brazilian legislation, which is already too permissive to My taste, forbids the constructions above 45 °. Above 20 °, which represents an already stiff slope, one can build by taking care to build walls of contention with drainage channels, a real sanitation network and especially less densifying to refore. Nothing this exists in this neighborhood that we have just crossed, “explains the specialist.
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