The mayor of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes, during a press conference about flooding in the Anhangabaú tunnel — Photo: Reproduction/TV Globo
The Public Prosecutor's Office asked the São Paulo Court to recognize the city hall's failure to meet the deadline in presenting intervention plans to combat flooding and improve urban drainage in the capital.
In a statement made this Wednesday (15), one day after the storm that flooded the Anhangabaú Tunnel, in the Center, the MP recalled that a sentence handed down in October 2025 pointed to the imposition of a daily fine of R$ 10 thousand, limited to R$ 1.8 million, in case of delays in fulfilling obligations determined by court.
According to the document, the deadlines for the presentation of the three intervention plans (short, medium and long term) ended in March, May and July 2026. The Public Ministry states that the documents presented by the municipal administration do not fully meet the content required by the sentence, which became final in January this year.
In addition to demanding compliance with the decision, the Housing and Urban Planning Attorney's Office asked City Hall to present, within 48 hours, explanations about the measures adopted to face the storm of October 14th. Among the points that should be clarified are the activation of contingency protocols, warnings to the population, the closure of the tunnel, assistance to stranded people and the operation of pumping systems.
The Public Ministry also requested that the municipality present, within 10 days, schedules for the execution of works foreseen in the Drainage Master Plan and in the Hydrographic Basin Notebooks.
In the demonstration, the body relates the episodes recorded during the storm to the urgency of the prevention measures that should have been planned and executed by the public authorities.
g1 questioned the city hall, but received no response until the last update of this report.
Deadline to present the three plans
The sentence underlying the MP's charge was handed down on October 23, 2025 and became final on January 22, 2026. The Court ordered the City Hall to present three intervention plans to address the problems of urban drainage and flood control, with deadlines of 60, 120 and 180 days.
The documents should cover short, medium and long-term measures, and each plan should identify the city's critical areas, establish a hierarchy of risks, describe in detail the necessary works, estimate the costs, present an execution schedule and indicate the sources of resources to finance the interventions.
According to the count presented by the Prosecutor's Office, the deadlines for completing the three stages ended on March 23, May 22 and July 21, 2026, respectively, that is, when the new storm hit the capital, the three deadlines had already expired.
The Public Ministry states that the municipality did not present plans that met all the requirements established by court. The statement cites documents added by the City Hall to the process, which, according to the body, consisted of the reorganization of information already existing in the Drainage Master Plan and the Watershed Notebooks.
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Work schedule and fine for delay
The demonstration also requests that City Hall present, within 10 days, two sets of schedules:
One for the immediate execution of all works foreseen in the Action Plan of the Drainage Master Plan;
And another for the beginning and end of the interventions foreseen in the River Basin Notebooks already prepared.
The Prosecutor's Office also wants the Court to formally recognize the delay in meeting the three deadlines and determine the incidence of the daily fine of R$10,000 established in the sentence, up to a limit of R$1.8 million. The amount, according to the request, would be allocated to the Special Expense Fund for Reparation of Injured Diffuse Interests.
Nunes says the reaction to the flooding in the Anhangabaú tunnel 'worked well'
The mayor of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes (MDB), stated that the reaction to the flood in the Vale do Anhangabaú tunnel worked well and that the water rose 1 meter in just three minutes during the storm that hit the capital of São Paulo on Wednesday afternoon (14). The flood left 26 cars and two buses submerged.
"[The flooding] started at 4:07 pm, and at 4:10 pm, exactly three minutes later, you already had more than a meter of water," he said this Thursday (15) during a press conference.
According to the city hall, the six pumps installed at the site worked uninterruptedly, without any failures, but were unable to handle the volume of rain recorded in the region. It took approximately an hour for the flooding to clear.
According to the municipal administration, it rained 42 millimeters in the Anhangabaú region in around 40 minutes, equivalent to 37% of the average forecast for the entire month of October in the capital. The city hall reported that the volume corresponds to what was expected for 11 days of the month.
Despite the inconvenience to the population, Nunes believes that the city hall's response to the episode was appropriate given the circumstances. "It's a very large volume of water. [The reaction protocol] worked well. As you can see, with that much volume of water, it took three minutes to fill, and we were able to quickly, considering Anhangabaú's history, get the water back to normal," declared the mayor.
According to the mayor, the flooding began at around 4:07 pm and was significantly reduced in less than an hour with the activation of the tunnel's fixed pumps and trucks equipped with suction pumps that reinforced the operation. Nunes said that emergency vehicles arrived at the scene around 4:40 p.m.
According to him, when the most intense precipitation began, the tunnel was already occupied by vehicles during peak hours. "Unfortunately, we were unable to anticipate and block vehicles from entering the tunnel, because the cars were already there when the volume of water fell," he said.
Despite assessing that the municipal administration's response was adequate, Nunes admitted that the procedures could be reviewed after the episode. "Now we will be improving our protocols, perhaps increasing the volume of our pumps, we will be doing all of this," said the mayor, without giving further details.
Earlier, the Traffic Engineering Company (CET) reported that the tunnel closures began at 3:38 pm, within the protocol adopted in State of Attention situations for flooding.
The mayor, however, contested the information presented by reporters during the press conference. "There was no closure at 3:48 pm yesterday. Either you have the wrong information, or CET gave you the wrong information," he said.
When responding to questions about the possibility of preventively closing the tunnel, the mayor stated that the intensity of the rain surprised even the meteorological services and that vehicles were already on the road when the water began to rise.
"The protocol worked. People also asked: 'ah, but why didn't the traffic close when the rain started?' If you look at the meteorologists' forecast from the previous day in relation to yesterday's date, there was no forecast for this volume of water", explained the mayor.
"Not even meteorologists were able to predict that volume of water due to climate change. If you take the bulletin from our Operations Center, it said the following: 'look, there will be a front that comes from the interior and there will be moderate to heavy rain'. I mean, from moderate to heavy it is a huge space", he added.
Cars and buses float in the Anhangabaú tunnel during heavy rain in SP — Photo: Personal Archive
"The city hall's action is very quick, automatic. Now, let's be honest with all the people who live in São Paulo or who work and who visit. We are living in a time of climate change. 40% of the rain predicted for the entire month will fall in a few minutes? We obviously have a situation that is different from a normal pattern", he added.
The mayor also attributed the flooding to the concentration of underground watercourses that converge in the region and said that he is evaluating the construction of a swimming pool under the Bandeira Terminal, close to Vale do Anhangabaú.
According to him, the work is estimated to cost more than R$350 million, but it is not yet considered a priority in light of other flood interventions underway in the city.
