On a serious note

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! To add to the unfortunately growing list of global calamities – financial crisis, Congo, Zimbabwe, and most recently the terror attacks in India – I just want to draw attention a disaster that is going on in my current backyard of Brazil right now. The southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina has been hit by massive flooding that has left 100 dead at the moment (more than twice as much as the BBC article below reported) and over 78,000 without homes. The region had very heavy rains over the past week which ultimately led to the flooding. But in the larger picture, persistent and steady rains have soaked the region for much of the past two months. I heard somewhere that over the past 50-60 days in Santa Catarina it has rained for all but 4 of them. Santa Catarina is most famous amongst travelers for being the home state of Florianopolis, an island just off the mainland that has dozens of beautiful beaches. It’s a stomping grounds for travelers, Brazilian and foreigners, mainly during the summer months. Almost every weekend since I’ve been here there have been groups of exchange students in my program flocking to “Floripa” (and most likely they have gotten rained on). I have yet to go….perhaps sometime in early January, however. But anyway, I’m not sure if this news has reached the US. Perhaps if it has it was just a 15 second segment on CNN morning news. But it’s pretty big news here. For the most part, Brazil is very natural disaster-free. The US, I would say, gets pounded on more than Brazil. Brazil doesn’t get hurricanes, it doesn’t sit on any fault lines making it prone to earthquakes, there are no seasonal forest fires, and of course, no blizzards. Well, I just wanted to raise some awareness about sad and unfortunate news going on here which probably otherwise would not have reached the US.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6338483

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7745133.stm