Brazil, a land where torrential rains, floods, droughts and heat waves are more frequent and intense, was hit this Friday night by the passage of a very strong tornado that killed six people and caused more than 400 injuries, nine of them seriously. There is also a missing person. The epicenter of the destruction, a town called Río Bonito de Iguaçu, is 300km from the famous waterfalls and 3,200km as the crow flies south of Belém, the Amazon city hosting the UN climate change summit. Winds reached more than 250 kilometers per hour. “In the last 30 or 40 years we have never seen a tornado of such strength. It destroyed silos and petrol stations,” said the governor of the state of Paraná, Ratinho Junior, reports the newspaper O Globo.
Governor Ratinho Júnior estimates that 10,000 of the 14,000 inhabitants of the small southern Brazilian city were affected by this tornado which coincides with COP30, the summit where negotiators from around the world try to reach a consensus on how to stop global warming and keep the planet habitable.
The federal government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva mobilized immediately and announced the dispatch of civil protection and humanitarian aid workers to the city of Río Bonito de Iguaçu and the rest of the affected region. The governor has decreed a state of catastrophe in this city, where many of the liberated houses were hit by strong winds and falling trees.
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the planet’s temperature rises. A very visible situation in Brazil. A year ago, the state of Rio Grande do Sul, also in the south-eastern region, the most developed in the country, was inundated by floods that killed more than 200 people. And just a year earlier, the Amazon had suffered a historic drought that caused severe damage, including the deaths of hundreds of dolphins asphyxiated in dry lakes.
At the summit of presidents that took place in Belém over the last two days, many speakers from the five continents recalled the recent climate catastrophes in their respective countries, such as Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, who paid special mention to the dana victims in Valencia.
In these spring days in the southern hemisphere, a strong storm is hitting the south-east of Brazil. The city of Rio de Janeiro has been on alert since dawn and the mayor. Eduardo Páez asked residents to avoid unnecessary travel. Also in the city of (San Paolo) a very strong storm with intense rain occurred this night.
