Two dead as powerful storm hits southern Brazil

BRASILIA (AFP) Mar 28, 2004
At least two people died and dozens were injured Sunday after an powerful storm slammed into southern Brazil, destroying hundreds of homes with winds roaring at up to 150 kilometers (90 miles) per hour, officials said.

One person died in the town of Torres in Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, and another in Aranagua in the neighboring state of Santa Catarina, civil defense sergeant Ismael Ros da Lus told AFP by telephone.

Two boats carrying six fishermen also went missing during the storm, officials said.

Some 600 families in both states lost their homes in the storm, civil defense officials said. Telephone and electric lines were down in Torres, where authorities declared an emergency area.

The storm hit about 20 towns, leading authorities to ask for donations of food, blankets and mattresses to help families forced to seek shelter in gymnasiums and other public buildings.

Brazilian meteorologists called it an extra-tropical storm, but its winds were so strong that normally it would be classified as a hurricane.

Luiz Cavalcanti, of the Brazilian Meteorological Institute, said such conditions "had never occurred" in that part of the southern Atlantic and that scientists could not explain what caused the storm.

TERRA.WIRE