When the two cubs arrived at a makeshift shelter in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, their thin legs bent from exhaustion. They had been treading water for hours, fighting to survive as floodwaters submerged the city and turned the streets into rivers.
“We tried to get them to walk, but they couldn’t,” said Dr. Daniel Guimarães Gerardi, a volunteer veterinarian at the shelter. “At times like this your heart aches for the suffering of these poor animals.”
Two days after being rescued, the six-month-old strays (one tiger-striped, the other jet black) mostly dozed on donated blankets among chew toys, still exhausted from their ordeal. When they were awake, they staggered around the shelter on unsteady legs, tails wagging, ears pinned tightly.
They did not have name tags and since they were found on May 21, no one had come looking for them. “We hope that if they have caregivers, they will find them,” Dr. Guimarães said. Otherwise, he added, the goal will be to find them a good, safe home.
More than a month after catastrophic floods hit southern Brazil, its worst disaster in recent history, the region is still reeling. The floods submerged entire cities, destroyed bridges, closed an international airport and displaced nearly 600,000 people across the state of Rio Grande do Sul. At least 169 people died and 56 remain missing.
Amid the turmoil, thousands of animals were separated from their owners and trapped by floodwaters. Dramatic scenes of dogs struggling to save themselves by climbing onto the roofs of flooded houses and firefighters rescuing stranded animals, including a horse named Caramel, made headlines around the world. (Caramel finally met his owner.)
Even as the floods subside, tens of thousands of people remain in temporary shelters, unable to return to their destroyed or damaged homes. And more than 12,500 domestic animals have been rescued since the start of the crisis, according to state authorities.
Many of these animals do not have owners, said Fabiana de Araújo Ribeiro, director of Porto Alegre’s animal welfare office.
Even when they do, “they have nowhere to return” because their homes have been ruined, Ribeiro said.
And as water levels cover street signs and house numbers, rescuers have had difficulty recording precisely where the pets were rescued or who they might belong to.
Waves of homeless animals are common after natural disasters around the world, when owners are killed, separated from their pets or forced into temporary shelters that do not allow animals.
However, returning displaced animals is more complex in countries like Brazil than in the United States, where best practices often include methodically recording where animals are located and setting up centralized hotlines to help owners find pets, Joaquín said. de la Torre Ponce, director for Latin America of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
It is also more common in the United States than in many parts of Latin America for owners to implant tracking chips in their pets, making it easier to reunite them, animal welfare advocates said.
And stray animals are more prevalent in Latin America, where animals are often fed and cared for for an entire block, Ponce said.
“These community dogs and cats don’t have a specific owner,” he said. “So no one will come looking for them in a scenario like this.”
Under the leaking roof of an abandoned warehouse in Canoas, a city neighboring Porto Alegre, some 800 rescued dogs crawled, whimpered and barked in makeshift kennels built from wooden pallets.
The space had been converted into a makeshift shelter by volunteers who worked in shifts to register, feed, medicate and care for the animals. Few animals had names, but each box had a number, scribbled on cardboard by shelter workers.
Many had been saved by rescue teams, after spending days or even weeks stranded on roofs, trees and flooded houses. Some arrived injured or sick and most were severely malnourished.
Some, like Gigante, an older Labrador wearing a pink shirt with red hearts, had been dropped off by owners who were prohibited from bringing their pets to the temporary shelters they now called home.
In the corner, a muscular white and brown stray dog was pulling on a chain leash, exposing its sharp teeth. He had largely recovered from a cut on his snout, volunteers said, but he had been anxious since floods inundated his home and sent his owner to the hospital.
Deep in the warehouse, a dull Rottweiler lay curled up in the back corner of his kennel, his head resting on his paws. Firefighters had found him swimming in the streets of Canoas two weeks earlier, shaking and agitated.
In recent days, another heavy rain caused commotion in the shelter. When it started to rain, the dogs tried to climb to the roofs of their kennels. “They get nervous when they see the water,” said Celso Luis Vieira, a 74-year-old volunteer. “They think the place is about to flood.”
On a recent weekday morning, Sérgio Hoff was searching the warehouse for his missing pets. When he was evacuated from his home in Canoas with his wife and his 9-year-old daughter in early May, the family had to leave their five dogs and three cats behind.
“My wife panicked; she didn’t want to leave them,” said Hoff, a 39-year-old banker. “But we just couldn’t take them with us. “It was chaos.”
The family let the animals loose in their garden, hoping they would climb to higher ground if the water rose. They never imagined that the flood waters would submerge their entire house.
Hoff eventually found two of his dogs at a shelter on the other side of Canoas, giving him hope that the others had survived as well. But after weeks of searching other animal shelters and scrolling through social media pages, he still hadn’t found the rest of the pets.
“Frustration is the only word that describes this,” he said after another failed visit to a shelter. “But we’re not going to give up.”
Back at the Porto Alegre shelter, a 2-year-old black stray named Ticolé had better luck.
Frightened by the rush of water that invaded his neighborhood, the dog had escaped from his house and ran away, just when his owners were preparing to flee. After two weeks, his owner, Jorge Caldeira Santos, finally located him.
“I found it,” he said, as he took Ticolé out of the shelter.