Ivan Richard Reporter Agência Brasil

Maceió, Alagoas – A little more than a week after flash floods killed at least 34 people and caused enormous damage in 28 municipalities, Civil Defense authorities in Alagoas are warning the population near the Mundaú and Paraiba rivers to be on the alert. More rain is coming.
During the month of June it rained far above average in Pernambuco and Alagoas, two poor states in the poor Northeast region of Brazil. In some places the rainfall during a three-day period in mid-June was three times the monthly average. By the 18th rivers were swollen, the ground was saturated and dams and dikes were trying to burst their seams. And then they burst. The tragedy began when a dam collapsed at Canhotinho, Pernambuco (pop. 24,000), located 210 kilometers west of the state capital, Recife (on the coast), and a little more than 100 kilometers from Maceio (also on the coast), capital of Alagoas, to the south). The dam at Canhotinho on the Canhoto River was washed away late in the afternoon. Three hours later, moving south like a small tsunami toward the sea the water broke through another dam at Usina Serra Grande, in the state of Alagoas (this sugar mill was founded in 1894 and is one of the state’s biggest producers of sugar and ethanol). After another three hours, the wall of water roared into the Mundaú River where it devastated the town of União dos Palmares, also in Alagoas (pop. 62,000) (this is a historical area populated as far back as the end of the 16th century by runaway slaves. It is often called "Land of Liberty," as it was there at the end of the 17th century that the Negro leader, Zumbi, established a shortlived empire of free Negroes. Zumbi was executed on November 20, 1695 - a date now commemorated in Brazil as Negro Day "Consiência Negro").  By the time the raging tide reached the next city downriver, Branquinho (pop. 12,000), it had so much force it razed 90% of the building in the urban center and, with the river waters now six meters above its normal level, railroad tracks were twisted like spaghetti. The mayor of Branquinho says she will have to practically rebuild the city, but she intends to do so in a different location, far from the river.
Note of explanation: União dos Palmares, in Alagoas (Land of Liberty), was hit by floodwaters from the Mundaú River. Palmares, in Pernambuco (Land of Poets), was struck by floodwaters from the Una River. Both Palmares and the Una River are north of the state of Alagoas.                                                                   President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip to the G-20 meeting in Toronto because of the tragedy. On Thursday, June 24, he was in the region (which is near where he was born). Beginning on Friday, June 25, he has led the effort to get assistance to a part of the country where assistance was precarious at best in the past and is now mostly nonexistent (differently from other parts of Brazil that have had problems with rainfall this year. The South (Santa Catarina) and the Southeast (São Paulo and Rio) have good infrastructure. That is not the case in the Northeast where Pernambuco and Alagoas are located).

Allen Bennett - translator/editor The News in English
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