The Holocaust

In underdeveloped Brazil, the state of Parana occupies a vital niche. From its fertile soil come 45% of the country's coffee, 90% of its newsprint, and huge quantities of corn, cotton and beans. Last week Brazil's most prosperous farm state was going up in flames--victim of one of the worst fires in any country's history. Scattered over 50,000 sq. mi., or more than half the state, the fires reduced vast forests of pine, cedar and eucalyptus to ashes, turned coffee plantations and pastures into scorched wastelands, devoured homes and destroyed thousands of head of livestock. Officials could only guess at the toll--uncounted millions in property damage, at least 78 people dead, thousands more injured, possibly 15,000 homeless.

The First Spark. To blame was the state's eight-month drought, which has turned the southern part of Brazil--from the Uruguayan border to Rio--into a tinderbox. All it took was some farmers burning off their land for the next planting, cigarettes carelessly flicked away, campfires not quite snuffed out, or a spark from an old coal-burning locomotive. What started as a few scattered blazes soon blew in to hundreds of fires, then thousands.

In one typical hour last week, radioed dispatches told the grim tale. Terra Rica: "Fires have destroyed the whole region." Santa Fe: "Incalculable material losses." Ipiranga: "The people are desperate." Curiuva: "35 dead, 60 treated in the medical center, 106 houses destroyed, 901 refugees." In Natingui, where 23 died, terrified town-folk described a "huge ball of flame about 100 meters around" that leaped suddenly out of the forest, landing on two homes at once.

With some 10,000 state fire fighters, militiamen, federal troops and volunteers, Parana officials are concentrating more on saving populated areas than fighting the flames themselves. No town has been totally burned. The biggest victory was saving Cidade Nova, site of Brazil's largest paper mill. It took 17 bulldozers and hundreds of fire fighters clearing a two-mile-wide fire lane around the town to check the flames. Though 70% of the mill's forest reserves were wiped out, the mill and town were saved.

Only 22 hours after Parana's Governor Ney Braga requested U.S. aid, three planeloads of food, medicine, tents, fire fighters, doctors and nurses landed in Parana. A U.S. Navy Task Force in Rio on maneuvers provided gauze, cotton and medication for fire victims. Top U.S. fire-control experts flew in immediately, including Merle Lowden, chief of the fire-control division of the U.S. Forest Service. Peace Corps doctors and nurses opened a 100-bed hospital in Tibagi, where U.S. officials began doling out supplies. Homeless and penniless the refugees may be, says a Brazilian in Tibagi, "but most of them are wearing new clothes for the first time in their lives, and they're overfed."

Window into the Blaze. By week's end many of the fires had burned themselves out. But new ones were threatening the neighboring states of Sao Paulo on the north and Santa Caterina on the south. A heavy blue haze overhung the entire state, making it difficult for planes to spot new fires before they got out of control. At one point the haze lifted for an hour or so. And in that time, U.S. Consul Arthur Feldman, flying in a light plane, discovered two previously unreported fires moving rapidly toward Curitiba, the capital of Parana. One was 35 miles away, the other 17.

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