A second safety gate, located in the north of Porto Alegre, broke in the early afternoon of this Friday (3). Gate 14 was breached by the force of the waters that accumulated due to the storms that hit Rio Grande do Sul. The information was presented to the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo, during the press conference. After being communicated, he asks: “The entire gate?” and confirmation follows.
The floodgate is under Avenida Sertório and opens the way to Rua Voluntários da Pátria, close to DC Navegantes. “That’s not one of the biggest gates we have. There is a flat region and you can advance into Sertório. We cannot predict how far the water will advance”, said the mayor, when requesting that all civil defense personnel be moved to the region of the ruptured floodgate.
Gate 14 collapsed late this morning, when Army tanks arrived to reinforce the structure.
Evacuation
Shortly before being informed about the collapse of the floodgate, Melo had recommended the closure of businesses at least until next Sunday (5) due to imminent flooding of the Historic Center and the 4th District of Porto Alegre. “We are going to shore up our gates between 12 and 14 because they do have problems,” he said, mentioning that sandbags had already been placed on both gates and, even so, there were leakage problems.
When citing what he calls “guided evacuation”, the mayor says: “I want to appeal to people. Since businesses are closing, I think people who are closest to the river [Guaíba] they should also take the step of leaving the 4th District”.
“I can’t come here and say ‘I 100% guarantee the gate won’t break.’ I can’t do that and neither can the engineer do that. I have to work with all possibilities. In these possibilities, I think yes, it is reasonable to ask residents, especially those in the Historic Center and the 4th District, that they can, in addition to closing businesses, not circulate. Those who can leave, obviously, this is the mayor’s recommendation”, said the mayor, before breaking up.
Homeless and donations
Still during the press conference, the mayor reported that, at the moment, Porto Alegre has 450 homeless people. In total, three shelters are receiving flood victims in the city and a new shelter is being set up in the Menino Deus neighborhood. “We are analyzing other possibilities – among them, the [ginásio de esportes] Giant. During the day, we will make more decisions, according to the number of homeless people, which is increasing at every moment.”
“I know that everyone, at this moment, wants to help and that must be commendable and [ficamos] very grateful. But don’t take donations to shelters. This creates a great difficulty for us. Donations must be taken to Civil Defense. She organizes the distribution,” she said. “It’s an appeal I’m making: we need donations, lots of donations. But they must be directed to the right places so that we can target them correctly.”
Public calamity
On Thursday night (2), the city hall declared a state of public calamity in Porto Alegre. The instrument classifies the disaster as of great intensity (level III). In practice, the decree – based on opinions from the municipal civil defense and the Foundation for Social Assistance and Citizenship (Fasc) – authorizes the administration to employ all resources and volunteers to assist the population and restore services.
In addition to the rains causing at least 31 deaths and leaving 74 people missing, they also affected telecommunications services, making the work of rescue teams even more difficult.
The Porto Alegre Civil Defense released a new alert this Thursday, indicating the possibility of extreme rains continuing until noon on Monday (6). Emergency requests must be made by calling 199, or contacting the Fire Department (193).
