Alex Rodrigues      Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasilia - The Amazon River is at record flood levels. And there is the worst drought in memory in Northeast Brazil.

Because of the drought, the situation is much the same throughout the whole of Northeast Brazil, especially in the climatic areas known as the sertão and the agreste, which lie between the meio-norte (a transition area that borders the Amazon) and the zona da mata (on the coast); both the meio-norte and zona da mata have much more rainfall than the sertão and agreste. For that reason, the latter are known as a semiarid area.

 In Rio Grande do Norte, over 500,000 people in 139 cities have been affected by prolonged drought. Often rural inhabitants are forces to travel long distances to get water – on foot under a boiling sun.

In the town of Lajes, located 120 kilometers from the capital, Natal, the situation is dramatic. The local secretary of Communication and municipal coordinator for Civil Defense, Pedro Joventino Alves, says up to 50% of the animals in the municipality are threatened by thrist or hunger or both. People are getting water from water trucks (“carros-pipa”) that are being supplied by the Army.

“The situation is really critical. We have not had rain for a year and the reservoirs that supply some 2.5 million people are dry. We now depend on carros pipa for all our water,” said Joventino Alves.

According to the governor of Rio Grande do Norte, Rosalba Ciarlini (DEM), the problem is not the drought. “We are used to droughts. That is nothing new in this region. What has changed is the climate and that will force us to come up with hydric infrastructure that gets water to our cities and farms. This is the biggest drought ever and it is not going to end now. We know that each day we will have to deal with more calamities,” declared the governor.

The state government has announced restarting construction of water pipeline systems (“adutores”) and cisterns.

At the same time, the federal government has various social assistance programs that will be triggered into action as the situation worsens. There is Harvest Insurance (expected to benefit some 37,000 families in Rio Grande do Norte) that will begin making five monthly payments of R$136 in June. There is also the Drought Bolsa that pays poor families that are not eligible for Harvest Insurance a monthly benefit of R$80 for five months. 

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English

Link - Seca castiga Rio Grande do Norte e afeta 500 mil pessoas na área rural