Stories of Paraná - Paraná is fire

Stories of Paraná - Paraná is fire

Paraná is fire
Valêncio Xavier

Between August and September 1963, the Paraná caught fire.
Nearly 650,000 acres of its forests, woodlands, plantations and pastures were consumed by the flames, reaching 128 municipalities in an area of ​​about 21 square kilometers.
Homes, farms, ranches, silos, sheds, barns, stables and other buildings were destroyed by fire.
A number incalculado today of cattle, livestock and wildlife dying burned.
Officially, 964 people were injured and 110 killed.
But no one knows the exact number of human victims of this scourge that was one of the largest fires recorded in the world in recent years, considering the concentration area, in the words of Merle Lowden, director of the Division of Fire Control, Ministry Agriculture of the United States, which gave aid to combat seemingly uncontrollable fire of Paraná, in 1963.
The year 1963 there had been good for the Paraná inclement drought earlier in the year, frost in winter reaching more than 50% of the coffee plantations in the state.
To cap the tragic year in mid-September comes the third horseman of the Apocalypse: a forest fire that sometimes galloped to nearly 20 miles per hour.
The great fire had begun in the room Brazilian custom of burning for land clearance for planting. The drought helped, and lack of preparation to fight wildfires did the rest.
The fire was spreading throughout the state.
Curitiba, the capital, the sky was covered with ashes that made the day dark earlier.
Arise rumors: the great fire had started when the former governor Moyses Lupion set fire to the pine reserve a paper mill in Arapoti to get insurance. The region was one of the hardest, only 27 people died there. The excellent photographer Rudolph Goerke, Jaguariaíva, made the shocking photos of the charred corpses of eight workers at Matarazzo who fought the fire.
These photos served to end other rumors said that there is no fire, everything was the invention of the then Governor Ney Braga to get money from the state: President Joao Goulart sent immediate aid. American technicians in fighting forest fires came in the nick of time.
The American fleet on maneuvers off the Brazilian coast, came medicines, food and clothing for the victims. The Kennedy administration, through the Alliance for Progress, sent a cíinheirão for the reconstruction of the state. Several countries sent money, clothing and supplies for the victims, to the Soviet Union.
The great fire only ended with the arrival of rains, in late September.
The same rains that much damage done to the Paraná this September and October after 30 years.
If aid arrived in the hands of flagellates? Long after we saw the home of political latonas powdered milk-new at the time - with the words "Donation of the American People," or written in Russian.
That during the Cold War.

Valêncio Xavier, writer and historian.


Source: Stories of Paraná, Brasil.