After slipping on her rubber boots, Darcilla Melo Da Silva, 58, took a deep breath before she stepped through the metal gates of her house, guided by her husband, Admar, 68. The scene she had so feared to see for the past 12 days appeared before her eyes. The vegetable garden where she had planted cabbage and herbs to alleviate her severe health problems was buried under a layer of mud. The remains of a white hen lay among the tangled planks, next to her new washing machine, which had been swept into the garden by the current and had ended up crushed under a tree trunk.

The interior of her house, which took her 40 years to furnish, was even more desolate. A smell of rot was pervasive. Without any electricity, Da Silva had to discover the extent of the damage by the light from her husband's smartphone: holes in the roof, raised floor, overturned armchairs... "Everything has to be rebuilt," said the grandmother barely able to breathe.

The retired couple, who lived in the Cidade Baixa district in the west of Porto Alegre, were among the 540,188 people who were forced to evacuate their homes in early May when floodwaters engulfed two-thirds of the towns in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a hilly area on the border with Argentina and Uruguay with a population of some 11 million.

'Result of global warming'

Since April 27, torrential rains have battered the region, raising the level of the Guaiba, a body of water – considered as much a river, lake or estuary – that borders the Porto Alegre metropolitan area, by several meters. On May 6, the day Darcilla Melo Da Silva and Admar evacuated their home, the water level reached 5.3 meters: the most severe flooding since 1941, when the Guaiba had risen to a height of 4.76 meters.

"This extreme event is the result of global warming" aggravated by the El Niño phenomenon, said Francisco Aquino, climatologist and head of the geography department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. As temperatures rise, "we expect them to become more frequent and intense."

In Porto Alegre, a 6-meter-high, 2.6-kilometer-long concrete flood wall erected in the 1970s was supposed to prevent such a tragedy. But, due to a lack of maintenance, a valve leaked water from the Guaiba into the historic center of the capital, flooding 19 of the 23 pumping stations in the north of the city, which were shut down to avoid electric shock.

The water poured with devastating force into the northern districts, shattering the windows of cars parked in the streets. In just two hours, "the water was already up to my neck," recalled Da Silva, who measures just under 1.60 meters. The grandmother, who is now staying with friends and family, had just enough time to run and help her daughter evacuate her twin daughters, aged just a month and a half, carrying them in her arms, despite her aching back, to the army truck that had come to rescue local residents.

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