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Rio de Janeiro. The incessant rain that killed at least 251 people last week has raised lingering questions about the city’s emergency readiness and revived a long-dormant debate over the poor squatter communities that have sprung up in areas at risk of flooding and landslides.

One of the worst storms in 40 years hit Rio last week, overflowing the banks of Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, crippling public transportation and sending dozens of homes built atop an old garbage dump crashing down a hillside in a neighboring city.

Sergio Cabral, governor of the state of Rio, announced last weekend that the state would spend more than $570 million to build 10,000 new homes for people at risk of floods or mudslides. Mayor Eduardo Paes said the city would immediately remove some 4,000 families from eight slums in high-risk areas and give them a monthly stipend to help them relocate.

“For the first time in more than four decades, there is the beginning of a long-overdue debate on the future of squatters,” said Amaury de Souza, a political analyst in Rio. He said that for years, politicians had tacitly approved of impromptu settlements as a solution to urban housing shortages but that the recent rains had forced a new perspective.

Paulo Etchichury, a meteorologist at Southern Marine Weather Services in Sao Paulo, said: “The disorganized growth of the city begins to expose us to the dangers that natural disasters can cause.”

Managing the chaos of the rains has become a challenge — and perhaps an opportunity — for politicians during a presidential-election year. Cabral, who is running for re-election in October, is trying to get on the ticket of Dilma Rousseff, the presidential candidate whom President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is backing as his successor.

A rival in the presidential race, Jose Serra, Sao Paulo State’s governor, has already been criticized by an anxious public for not doing enough to minimize the effects of intense flooding there in January and February, when the city of Sao Paulo endured 47 straight days of rain that killed 75 people.

Rain has become a persistent problem in the southern half of South America this year because of El Nino’s warming of Atlantic waters, meteorologists said.

And it seems to be getting worse.

Research has shown that rain has become more frequent and more intense in southeastern Brazil over the past 50 years, said David Easterling, chief of the scientific services division for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climatic Data Center.

The rain that struck Rio last week in the first 24 hours of the storm was double the amount of rain that was expected in all of April, said Marlene Leal, a meteorologist with Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology.

The seas seemed primed to engulf Rio in huge waves, with stunned residents snapping pictures of water overflowing the sea wall at Flamengo Beach and landing on the road.



The New York Times