A 100-year-old woman was rescued after several days trapped in her home during the floods that have hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, causing more than a hundred deaths.

The Notícias ao Minuto spoke to one of the people who participated in the efforts to rescue the elderly woman, who was bedridden.

Geisson Flores, 36, is not a firefighter or a professional in rescue operations, but he decided to get involved in community efforts to try to help people affected by the floods.

"I got involved because I felt it was my duty, because I have some experience of knowing how to behave in the water and deal with the 'jet sky'", he explained to the Notícias ao Minuto, revealing several impressive stories of the rescues in which he has participated.

One of them happened on May 5 and involved the aforementioned 100-year-old woman, who was on the second floor of a house heavily affected by the floods, bedridden, and who required an elaborate rescue operation.

First, it was necessary to remove an iron gate from a gate, to allow a canoe to reach the house, which was at the back of the land. Then - all this with water up to his neck - it was necessary to remove the lady from the house, on a stretcher.

Once on the boat, she was removed from the site, in Rio Branco, Canoas, on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, as you can see in the video that accompanies this news.

"She had been there for two or three days of flooding. The caregiver started to cry saying that 40 boats had already passed, everyone said they would come back and ended up not coming back because it was a difficult situation", said Geisson.

Regarding the rescues, the man argued that "the civilians themselves coordinate better, sometimes, than the army itself, the firefighters". "Most of the time they don't even know what they are doing. The people themselves have to do the articulation and the logistics part", he lamented, however.

Geisson explained that, in the rescue efforts, it was necessary to create a "strategy". He has helped, with his water bike, to pull an aluminum boat that could accommodate between 8 and 10 people, and which was loaded, mainly, with children and the elderly.

"We had to make a strategy and choose the people who didn't know how to swim or who had nowhere to go", he explained, adding that the efforts also involved helping other people to reach the second floors of their homes. He ended up traveling four kilometers in a row of houses and other buildings hit by the floods.

The rescue of the... ribs

The floods that hit Rio Grande do Sul, including Porto Alegre and its surroundings, forced the evacuation of entire neighborhoods of the city, in addition to the rescue of several people... and not only.

Geisson shared with the Notícias ao Minuto another mission that he carried out in recent days, using his water bike, which is, at the very least, comical. He did not rescue people, but... four ribs, in Eldorado, not far from Porto Alegre.

"There are people who are taking the ribs they had, so I went to help, do the logistics to take them to other people's homes. They have coal there so they will roast four ribs, so as not to spoil them", he explained, adding that it is a group of people who chose to stay in their homes, instead of resorting to shelters installed, and, therefore, needed to find sources of food, since the food has not reached the place where they are.

"They will take care of the region, and they will roast and distribute. They have chickens and a pig for food", he said, concluding: "They themselves have to do logistics to feed themselves while they are there, because the shelters are a chaos; so they prefer to stay in their home and help each other, in the community".

It should be emphasized that authorities and volunteers continue to work hard to rescue people who are still isolated due to the high water level and who are starting to suffer from lack of food.

The heavy storm began on Monday of last week and continued in the following days, causing great damage to roads, bridges, residences and leaving a large part of the gaucho population without electricity or drinking water.

With 11 million inhabitants, Rio Grande do Sul has been greatly affected by climate change.

Read Also: Floods in Porto Alegre. "It was as if it were the beginning of the pandemic" (Portuguese version)