Almost 4 million Brazilians live in 13,000 risk areas, says survey

According to the Geological Survey of Brazil, the country has 3.9 million people living in 13,297,000 risk areas.

Of these, 4,000 locations are classified as “very high risk”, of landslides and floods, for example.

The most impacted states are Santa Catarina, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and São Paulo.

In an interview with CNN Radio SGB researcher Tiago Antonelli recalled that people do not live in these areas because they want to.

“They are there out of necessity and omission by the local government, the geological risk is usually in peripheral areas, which are not in the Master Plan and, in rainy seasons, they cause damage and death”, he said.

The municipal legislation, according to him, governs “which are the suitable places to receive constructions and how the containment works should be.”

“In irregularly occupied areas this does not happen”, he added.

Tiago says that in the medium and long term, to solve the problem, city halls “need to monitor so that occupations no longer occur and the municipality provides the necessary structure for security.”

“Unfortunately, the situation in Brazil is that risk areas increase and we have this mission to identify these areas and give light to municipalities for good management, whether with works or removing families”, he said.

Disaster prevention, according to Tiago, depends on an entire chain.

“There is mapping, issuing alerts, which goes through the Civil Defense to carry out the removal of people.”

He made the reservation that “there is no point in having mapping if you do not know how to put the policy into practice, there are a series of factors necessary before the geological event, which often does not work and causes victims.”

The expert points out that the responsibility for managing and identifying risks lies with the municipalities, although the state and federal governments provide support.

*Produced by Bruna Sales