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Janaína Teodoro decided to dig a well at home during the historic blackout that left 90% of Amapá without power in November 2020. The case became a symbol of the situation faced by more than 700,000 people during the water and electricity crisis in the North of Brazil.
Amidst the historic blackout that hit Amapá in November 2020, an extreme decision inside a simple house in Macapá entered the state’s memory. The unemployed Janaína Teodoro called brothers and neighbors to dig a well in her own backyard after her daughter spent the night crying from thirst.
The work began on a Friday, November 6, 2020, and practically demonstrated the extent of the energy and water collapse in the state. Without electricity supply, the hydraulic pumps became inoperative and the population had to improvise solutions to ensure the basics. Janaína’s case became a symbol of what more than 700,000 people experienced during the blackout that paralyzed Amapá for consecutive days.
How Janaína decided to dig the well
According to a report by F. de São Paulo, Janaína Teodoro lived with her mother and two daughters, one seven and the other 12. Unemployed, she supported the household with the little her mother received in benefits. When the blackout reached the fourth day, the family no longer had food or potable water at home.
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“They were by far the worst days I’ve ever lived. On the second day, we no longer had food or potable water. My daughter couldn’t sleep because of thirst, she kept asking for water. So our only solution was to dig a well immediately,” Janaína told Folha de S.Paulo in an interview.
The emergency work mobilized brothers and neighbors, who took turns with shovels and improvised tools to open a hole in the dirt ground of the backyard. The plan was to complete the well by the following Tuesday, with the expectation that it would provide water for the family even if the blackout continued dragging on.
The blackout that hit 90% of Amapá
The electrical collapse began on the previous Tuesday, November 3, 2020, after a fire at a state power substation. The effect was immediate and devastating. Within a few hours, about 90% of Amapá’s population was without electricity supply.
The ripple effect hit almost all essential services. Without power, the pumps that distributed water in urban networks stopped working. Macapá and other cities in Amapá were simultaneously left without light, without internet, without telephony, and without water supply in the taps, a situation that lasted several days.
The scenario exposed the fragility of the infrastructure in Northern Brazil. Unlike other regions, Amapá has limited connection with the National Interconnected Energy System, which made the local impact much more severe than it would be in other states of the country.
The drama of families in Macapá during the crisis
Janaína Teodoro’s case was not isolated. Several families reported to the newspapers the desperation for water during the blackout in Amapá, in situations ranging from simple exhaustion to medical urgency.
The lawyer Débora Borralho described the situation of her father, elderly and with sequelae from four strokes, who was left without water even to take his prescribed medications. “I went into despair because my father is elderly, sick, and had four strokes in one year. He lost his speech, has limited mobility, and needs medication all the time,” Débora said. Help came through social media, with a former teacher providing a gallon of water.
Another resident, Ana Barros, relied on buckets of water originally intended for bathing and dishes and ended up drinking this water due to lack of alternatives. Her brother, Lucas Mateus, has cerebral palsy and faced enormous difficulty sleeping, eating, and bathing during the most critical days of the blackout.
The 35-degree heat that aggravated everything
The average temperature in Amapá during the blackout hovered around 35 degrees, and the impact of the lack of energy was compounded by the extreme heat. Without air conditioning and without a fan, sleeping became torture for children, the elderly, and babies.
Nutritionist Priscila Monteiro, mother of a 27-day-old newborn, a 1-year and 9-month-old boy, and a teenager, described nights when she and her husband took turns rocking the children in the hammock.
“The nights were very difficult because it didn’t rain, it was hot, without wind, and with many mosquitoes. Then we became even more distressed, indignant, and obviously tired of fanning the children, rocking the hammock, or both at the same time,” Priscila told Folha de S.Paulo.
The combination of heat, lack of energy, and lack of water created a scenario where families began to make extreme decisions, such as digging an artesian well in the backyard, precisely due to the absence of viable alternatives. In one of the photos sent by Janaína’s family to the press, two shirtless men appeared in the hole dug in the dirt yard of the house.
The symbolism of popular invention under pressure
The emergency work of Janaína Teodoro caught the attention of the national press and became a symbol of what was being called the institutional abandonment of Northern Brazil. The image of a family digging their own artesian well to survive within a state capital shocked the country.
The case documented a form of Brazilian popular invention that arises in times of calamity. When the system fails, families seek direct solutions in their own territory, using tools and labor that are immediately available, without waiting for a response from the public authorities.
The homemade artesian well has clear limitations, especially in urban areas. The depth manually achieved is usually small, the water is not always drinkable without proper treatment, and the risk of contamination from surface aquifers is high. Still, in that extreme situation, the solution was what separated the family from complete dehydration.
The institutional response came gradually
The supply of energy and water in Amapá began to be gradually restored, on a rotating basis every six hours. According to information released by the state government at the time, about 70% of the supply system had already been restored by the Sunday following the start of the blackout.
The city hall of Macapá set up water supply points in some schools in the capital. The government of Amapá also distributed sodium hypochlorite bottles for the population to purify water intended for human consumption, in addition to 75,000 liters of drinking water per day at various points in the state.
The response, however, was considered slow given the urgency. For families like Janaína’s, who faced nights with children crying from thirst, the arrival of sodium hypochlorite and distribution points was not enough to solve the immediate problem. The solution of the artesian well was born precisely from this mismatch between human urgency and institutional speed.
What the Amapá blackout left as a lesson
The episode of November 2020 exposed the vulnerability of the electrical system in Amapá and, by extension, in other regions of Northern Brazil. The dependence on a single substation for the energy supply of most of the state was clearly a structural flaw to be corrected.
The story of Janaína Teodoro and the artesian well dug in the backyard remains a reminder of the fragility of systems that seem stable until the moment they completely fail. When the water doesn’t come from the tap and the energy doesn’t light the lamp, the basic infrastructure ceases to be invisible and reveals how much it sustains the everyday life considered normal.
More than five years later, cases like the artesian well in Macapá are cited whenever energy or water supply crises threaten Brazilian regions. The image of the hole in the backyard continues to be a powerful reminder of how far necessity can take an ordinary family in Brazil.
The case of Janaína Teodoro and the improvised artesian well in Macapá marked Brazil’s memory about the importance of basic infrastructure functioning. The story also shows the strength of ordinary families who find unexpected solutions when the official system does not respond in time.
And you, do you remember the blackout that hit Amapá in November 2020? Do you know similar stories in other states that were without power or water for long periods? Do you believe that the infrastructure in the North of Brazil has advanced since then? Leave your comment, share your opinion, and tag someone who needs to know this story.
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