January 2, 2022

14:01

João Paulo Guimarães – Cenarium Magazine

Itabuna (BA) – Walking through the streets of Itabuna, in the Mangabinha neighborhood, on New Year’s Eve, we can see that the mood is not one of celebration, but of reconstruction. People outside their homes cleaned the streets and piled up their losses in rubble that the city is slowly collecting.

The smell is unbearable, there is no way to describe it, but even so people like Mr. Iranildo, who was in the middle of the flood, don’t want to abandon their properties. He lost everything this year. He lost his wife and life partner, who passed away seven months ago, and also long time friends, gone by Covid-19. The house is now empty, with only a sofa and bottles of water donated by the Passionist Congregation of the Maria Goretti Church led by Father Francisco de Paula. In Iranildo’s kitchen only the broken refrigerator works, but now as a pantry for non-perishable food packages. He tries to dry an old Bible, wet and taken by mud, full of family photos, the only belonging and remembrance of his wife that he managed to save after the flood.

“My son, I lost everything as you can see there. Today is the New Year, but how do we celebrate? There is no atmosphere. Look at my kitchen. Not even a gas cylinder was left. The water took everything. I am too tired to celebrate. We have to help the neighbors too”.

Mr. Zarrão, another resident of Mangabinha, showed how his house looked after the floods hit the neighborhood. There is no more roof or belongings. Just a bed and some clothes illuminated by a wire that he pulled from the street to turn on a lamp. The volume of water reached more than five meters in the neighborhood. People without two-story houses had to flee in desperation, and people with two-story houses were trapped upstairs until help arrived.

Fast rising

Itabuna is a city with streets that vary in height in topography, so that minor floods occur every year, and this has gotten the population used to it. But the volume of water that came with the opening of the Itapé Dam took the population in some neighborhoods by surprise because of the force and speed with which the water arrived.

There was no warning or preparation for the population. The volume of the Cachoeira River rose more than six meters in a matter of minutes. The water invaded everything like a slower tsunami that filled the streets minute by minute. There was time for people to understand the need to flee from their homes, but there was no time to save furniture, electronics, cars or pets.

It was all very fast and the response of the population to this speed was solidarity. Groups of jet ski owners arrived immediately to help the population in the most affected areas such as the Mangabinha and Bananeira neighborhoods. In the nearby streets where the water did not reach, people also abandoned their comfort to donate solidarity and help in the search and rescue efforts.

Joimara Santos says that it all started on December 26, at 6pm. “We spent Christmas on the island and the situation is still critical, even though everything has passed. I was watching the soap opera and went to the kitchen and saw that there was water up to the ‘breast’ of my foot. I went to tell my father that water was entering the kitchen. It was a matter of seconds before I called my father and went back to the kitchen when the water was already up to my ankle. We heard the neighbors shouting desperately outside for us to get out of the house and get on the neighbor’s roof. We looked outside the house to try to understand what was happening because we weren’t watching the news or the social network and that’s when we saw the chaos and couldn’t believe it when we saw the water coming hard, carrying everything”, she said.

Joimara’s mother, Mrs. Eleuzina, 82 years old, is a wheelchair user and needed the help of another son to get out of the house through the garage. The front door was blocked and the family was almost trapped in the house, because in a matter of minutes the place was taken by water up to the roof. The water reached more than six meters in the area where Joimara and her family were.

No accountability

The City Hall started the work of cleaning the streets, but received a lot of criticism from the population, who believe that there was detour of money from donations made through the Pix opened by the City Hall itself, which has not yet accounted for the amount deposited to help the victims of this flood, which, according to the population, was worse than the 1967 flood in the region.