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Grupo de Resposta a Animais em Desastres photo

Dogs rescued from epic floods in southern Brazil approach the safety of dry land. The recovery mission in Canoas, an especially hard-hit city, was one of hundreds conducted by a nonprofit animal rescue group that goes by the acronym GRAD.

"A true endless nightmare." "Immense and exhausting." "Like being in a war." These are among the ways Brazilian veterinarians described going through some of the worst floods in the country's history.

In late April and early May, record rainfall battered Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state. Lakes and rivers overflowed. A dam collapsed. Towns were wiped away, and hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced. The rain and high water persisted for weeks; a state of emergency remains in force through the end of July. At least 182 people died, 31 are missing, and 806 were injured, according to information posted to the state Civil Defense website on July 8.

The disaster for people was a calamity for animals. As the water began to recede in early June, the bodies of countless cats, dogs, cows, horses and other domestic animals and wildlife surfaced in the mud-soaked wreckage; many more likely washed out to sea. Some owners evacuated to safety with their pets. Of the animals left behind, as many as 20,000 may have ended up in temporary shelters — many sick, injured and traumatized.

The VIN News Service communicated by video call, text message and email with six veterinarians living and working in the affected region to learn about their experience responding to the disaster. They supplemented their accounts with photos and videos.

Working mostly on their own initiative and without government support, the veterinarians described helping to rescue animals trapped in locked houses, on rooftops or abandoned on dry land. They treated cats and dogs for a range of conditions, from near drownings to giant nematodes. They helped build, organize and voluntarily staff emergency animal shelters. Those facilities are the center of a new crisis. Today, more than 18,000 animals reportedly are living in stopgap conditions in more than 350 shelters with inadequate resources and no homes to return to.

Early days

"By the time the waters started accumulating in the cities, it was already too late," said Dr. Ruben Cavalcanti, a regional director for Pet Support Hospital Group, which has five locations in and around Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. "Many people died, and many others were only able to grab their documents, cell phones and pets and run out of their homes."

Not all animals were lucky enough to escape. Early on, rescue boats were mandated to reserve space only for people. Or sometimes, owners left their pets behind, not recognizing the seriousness of the situation.

"The first days of the flood were the worst," said Dr. Elissandra da Silveira, a small animal veterinarian living in Canoas, a hard-hit city just north of Porto Alegre. "The flood happened so quickly, many people left their animals tied up, thinking there would be time to come back for them."

A veterinarian for the Brazilian Air Force, generally working with narcotics-sniffing dogs, da Silveira was assigned to work in shelters and aided in animal rescues 16 hours a day for 32 days straight. In the process, she contracted sporotrichosis, a zoonotic fungal skin infection that was common among animals in her care.

Da Silveira maintains that authorities exacerbated the impacts of the disaster. "Government officials did not inform the public of the actual gravity of the situation, all of which, according to several studies, was predictable," she said. "The experience as a veterinarian has been traumatic and horrible and to the discredit of any public policy."

She shared photos and videos of the aftermath, showing the bodies of dogs hanging on fences, a cat trapped in a window grill and a cow sunk in mud and surrounded by garbage bags and trash.

There is no official tally of the number of animals killed in the flood, but it was a lot. Cavalcanti reported: "Unfortunately, the number of animals that died was enormous, especially farm animals in rural areas where there are fewer houses, and they had no way to protect themselves."

The floods did not reach the homes and practices of most of the veterinarians who talked to VIN News, although most said they knew of practices that shut down. All six reported being affected by power outages and a lack of potable water. Pet Support Hospital Group temporarily closed two of its five practices, mostly so staff could deal with impacts on their lives and because floodwaters made getting to those locations difficult.

A dry home was not always a reprieve, according to Dr. Mariana Neuls, who owns a small animal practice in Porto Alegre. After a long day helping in any way she could, she'd plan to return home and relax. "But you couldn't relax," she said, "because it was, like, sirens from the police and helicopters and everything all the time." It didn't help that she also got in the habit of doomscrolling "really sad" videos of stranded animals. Luckily, many were rescued.

Intrepid efforts

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Art by Tamara Rees

Eventually, da Silveira, other veterinarians, members of the military and good Samaritans found ways to retrieve pets trapped in locked houses, clinging to structures just above the water and stranded on roofs. They used their own boats or rafts, or they paid high rates to rent anything that could be used to ferry animals to dry land. In the process, they faced unexpected dangers.

Neuls said rescue boats became the target of criminals. "They started stealing rescue boats to rob the houses that were being left behind because of the flooding," she said. "There are some neighborhoods that you couldn't go to to rescue the dogs … they would start shooting even at rescue boats."

Most of the rescued dogs are medium- and large-sized, according to Dr. Álan Gomes Pöppl, a professor of small animal medicine at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

"We believe most of the small-sized dogs were not able to survive the flow while drifting in the flood and died," he said.

The same is likely true of cats, which were recovered in vastly fewer numbers than dogs, according to several veterinarians. They also hypothesized that cats' innate shyness of people also likely made them more challenging to rescue.

One exception to the makeshift nature of most animal rescue efforts was Grupo de Resposta a Animais em Desastres (GRAD), a 13-year-old nongovernmental organization funded through donations that rescues animals in disasters, such as floods and wildfires. "We were the only specialized group rescuing animals at the first moment," said GRAD volunteer Dr. Rafaela Zluhan.

As the scale of the disaster dawned, Zluhan was dispatched from her home in the neighboring state of Santa Catarina, where she is a wildlife veterinarian. She would end up volunteering in the epicenter of the flood for 40 days before taking a break.

When she touched down in Canoas on the morning of May 4, "water was above my knee," she said. "Two hours later, it was at my belly. In the late afternoon, it was above myself, and I'm 6 feet tall."

Videos show Zluhan in a flotation vest, wetsuit and water shoes performing what she described as "technical" rescues. Gripping an occupied crate just above rib-high water, she dodges potentially dangerous floating debris. She uses a butterfly net to capture animals on roofs and against walls. She rips tiles off a roof, following the sound of meowing to extricate a cat, like a rabbit out of a magician's hat.

Near the end of her first stint, Zluhan rescued a cat trapped on a roof for 32 days, promptly adopted him and named him Mathias, after the neighborhood where he was found.

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Grupo de Resposta a Animais em Desastres photo

Dr. Rafaela Zluhan, a wildlife veterinarian and GRAD volunteer, comforts a dog that had received first aid after being pulled from the water in Canoas.

Of the 80 trained volunteers in GRAD, about 40 are veterinarians. As of June 13, the group had saved 1,200 animals, according to Zluhan.

"We are over there to save all animals," she said. "It can be a small frog to cattle. Humans can say, 'I don't have any warm place. I don't have a blanket to cover myself. I'm hungry.' Animals can't do that. So, we are over there for them."

Shelters out of thin air

Once animals were rescued, there was nowhere for most of them to go. "Homeless" or stray animals are common in Brazil, but shelters are scant.

So, veterinarians and others pitched in to create and volunteer at provisional shelters in parking lots, sports venues, warehouses, tents in parks and elsewhere.

Neuls recalled helping piece together a shelter in the parking lot at Iguatemi shopping mall in Porto Alegre about 10 days after flooding had begun. "It was, like, eight at night, and it was pouring rain," she said. "I was with six volunteers unloading 150 pallets of wood. We were just so, so tired."

Within 48 hours, they had created what became the standard set-up for shelters around the region: rows of improvised enclosures made from wood pallets, carpeted in newspapers, brown kraft paper and cardboard and furnished with donated pet beds, blankets, towels, pillows, toys and water bowls.

Because the structures have no doors, dogs are tethered to the walls with chains or leashes to keep them from roaming or fighting. Barking is nearly constant, though some exhausted dogs sleep amid the commotion, videos show. The shelter Neuls helped build eventually housed more than 300 dogs. A large one in Canoas housed around 1,000 dogs at one point.

Conditions can be unsanitary. There aren't enough volunteers to walk the dogs for bathroom breaks or immediately clean up messes. The situation is getting worse as volunteers begin returning to work and school or taking breaks from the shelters out of sheer exhaustion.

Cats are generally housed apart from dogs and have been kept in just about anything that can double as a crate, including laundry hampers and grocery carts. The shortage of volunteers is also tough on them.

"No matter how hard you try, a shelter is stressful for a cat," said Dr. Rochana Rodrigues Fett, who owns a feline practice in Porto Alegre. "They end up needy and in need of attention."

Rescued animals, especially those retrieved after weeks trapped by floodwaters, were malnourished and suffered from hypothermia, signs of near-drowning and skin injuries. They harbored fleas, ticks, worms, infections and scabies. Diarrhea has been widespread, and cases of botulism have been reported.

Cavalcanti and other Pet Support colleagues, da Silveira, Neuls, Pöppl and Zluhan have all volunteered at shelters, administering vaccines, dewormers and parasiticides, implanting microchips, performing simple surgeries, treating injuries and triaging animals that needed care at a hospital. In cases like at the Iguatemi mall parking lot, provisional veterinary clinics have been set up for treating and monitoring patients, shown in a video shot by Neuls.

Several veterinarians reported seeing increasing cases of zoonotic diseases, including leptospirosis, a contagious bacterial disease often picked up from contaminated water that can cause kidney or liver failure. Caught early, antibiotics are an effective treatment. (The Telegraph reported in late May that cases of leptospirosis had been confirmed in 50 people in the flood-ravaged area, leaving at least four dead.)

Most of what's known about illness and injury in the shelters is anecdotal.

"There is great difficulty in mapping and managing animal shelters, which prevents us from knowing the exact number of displaced animals and the status of diseases in these locations," Cavalcanti said.

Helping shelter dogs is complicated by the fact that the majority were street dogs before the floods. "Many did not have basic care even before the climate tragedy, being neglected and malnourished," Rodrigues Fett said. "Many are not neutered, which can lead to behavioral problems and pregnancy in the shelters, and not being vaccinated increases the number of cases of distemper and parvovirus."

Authorities announced in mid-June that the state — working with the veterinary school and GRAD — would neuter about 20,000 cats and dogs in shelters over the coming months.

Several veterinarians expressed skepticism that the government could achieve that goal in anything close to that timeframe.

Clinics do their part

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Photo courtesy of Dr. Elissandra da Silveira

The Brazilian Air Force received and distributed tons of food and medicine for animals. Dr. Elissandra da Silveira, in pink, is a veterinarian and soldier in the Air Force. She aided in disaster relief, helped rescue animals and provided veterinary care for 32 days straight.

Rodrigues Fett said she couldn't find "the emotional balance" to work in the shelters. Instead, she's been treating feline flood victims at her clinic. "In the first week, the animals had idiopathic cystitis [inflammation of the bladder] and [urinary] obstruction due to the stress of the situation," she said. In later weeks, she saw "respiratory illnesses … in those who spent a long time in contact with water and now those with fractures who were under rubble."

In her Porto Alegre clinic, Neuls has performed surgery on nearly 90 canine flood victims, removing enormous tumors, performing ovariohysterectomies on dogs with pyometra (infection of the uterus) and nephrectomies (surgically removing diseased or injured kidneys) on dogs with Dioctophyma renale, the giant kidney worm. Veterinarians in the region are diagnosing more instances of the parasitic nematode in former street dogs that otherwise would have gone untreated.

With veterinary school classes suspended for two months, professors, veterinarians, residents and students pitched in on rescues and at shelters. Flood victims needing complex medical care were treated at the teaching hospital.

In all their efforts, Neuls said the nimbleness of veterinarians has been the key to success in saving animals. "We know that individual vets like us are making the difference really fast," Neuls said. "Because everything that goes to the government takes forever."

Returning home?

One of the hard truths facing animal caregivers is that most owned animals will not find their way back home, in part because microchipping and pet tags are rare in Brazil.

Only once in 40 days as a first responder did Zluhan see identification on a pet. At a house in Canoas, she helped rescue eight cats from a nearly inundated cattery and eight dogs from a roof. Amazingly, all had collars and tags with the name and cellphone number of the owner. She said their reunion was "the most beautiful thing."

Cavalcanti said the ad hoc nature of the rescue effort has been another stumbling block. "Unlike in the USA, where best practices often include methodically recording where animals are found and creating centralized hotlines to help owners locate their pets," he said, "in Brazil, the creation of shelters was done organically by vets, protectors and volunteers."

Social media has helped. By posting pictures of animals on their Facebook and Instagram pages, for instance, shelters have assisted owners in identifying lost animals. "Many reunions resulted from this kind of initiative … and it's very exciting to see when an owner finds its animal," Pöppl said.

Reunions, however, are the exception rather than the rule. "Many people have lost everything and are not coming for their animals," da Silveira said. For the same reason, there likely are not many new potential homes for shelter dogs and cats in the state.

Some animals have been transported to other states in Brazil for adoption but the efforts have been hampered by concerns that rightful owners may someday come for them only to discover they are living somewhere else with a new family. (At least one veterinarian said that prospect is unlikely for the many shelter animals that exhibit signs of having been unowned or neglected before the flood.)

Several of the veterinarians who spoke to VIN News said the shelters are likely to be permanent.

"At the beginning, it was a complete chaotic situation," Pöppl said, "stressed animals, stressed people, but over days and due to donations coming from all over the country, the structure for the animals was being progressively improved."

Several veterinarians said they want the government to invest in making shelters safer and more comfortable for the animals, hiring veterinarians and bringing on additional staff to take on the work of feeding, walking and cleaning. They'd also like to see the development of adoption programs — essentially establishing a shelter system for the first time.

Those calls come as shelters face new challenges, including declining donations, volunteer burnout, the need to relocate animals as locations like sports venues and mall parking lots return to their pre-flood roles, and changes in shelter administration, with municipalities and the state taking over what had been the purview of nonprofits and volunteers.

Animals in the Iguatemi mall shelter had to be moved the first week of July. "This week is chaos," Nuels reported, "we are having to rebuild the shelter."

Note about interviews and translations: Drs. Mariana Neuls and Rafaela Zluhan were interviewed in English via WhatsApp video chat. Dr. Álan Gomes Pöppl answered questions in English by email. Drs. Elissandra da Silveira and Rochana Rodrigues Fett responded to email questions in Portuguese. The questions and answers were translated using Google Translate. Portuguese speaker and freelance writer Susan McGrath advised on nuances missed by the translation app. Dr. Renato Costa provided translation assistance for an email interview with his colleague Dr. Ruben Cavalcanti.