Trecho inicial da matéria, disponibilizado na Internet pela publicação

A Tragedy Deepens

Monday, Apr. 09, 1984

Too low. The death toll from a devastating fire last Feb. 25 in the shantytown—or favela—of Vila Soco, in the southern Brazilian town of Cubatao, was simply too low. Only 86 bodies were recovered after a gasoline-fed blaze exploded into a giant fireball that looked like an atomic mushroom cloud. Yet some 9,000 people lived in Vila Socó, a patchwork of wooden shacks built on stilts over a marshy swamp. Coroner Carlos Affonso Figueiredo found it strange that no bodies of children under five years of age had been discovered among the ashes and in the hot rubble that burned...

Trecho inicial da matéria, disponibilizado na Internet pela publicação

QUATRE-VINGTS PERSONNES SONT MORTES DANS L'INCENDIE D'UN BIDONVILLE PRÈS DE SAO-PAULO
LE MONDE | 28.02.1984 à 00h00 • Mis à jour le 28.02.1984 à 00h00

Cubatao (AFP). - Quatre-vingts personnes sont mortes et trente-deux ont été blessées grièvement dans l'incendie d'un bidonville à Cubatao, à quelque 70 kilomètres au sud-est de Sao-Paulo. Le sinistre s'est produit, le samedi 25 février à 1 h 30 du matin, alors que la population de la favela dormait. Il a été provoqué par la rupture d'un oléoduc reliant une raffinerie de la région au port de Santos.
Il semble que les habitants avaient détecté quelques heures auparavant une forte odeur d'essence et en avaient averti les autorités. 700 000 litres de pétrole se sont répandus sur la lagune où se trouve la favela, qui est bâtie sur pilotis. Pour une raison inconnue, une forte explosion s'est produite et a embrasé la nappe répandue. Le feu a brûlé les passerelles qui auraient pu permettre aux sinistrés de fuir. De nombreuses baraques, faites de bois et de carton, ont brûlé. On a retrouvé les cadavres carbonisés de femmes serrant leurs enfants dans les bras. Mille cinq cents personnes vivaient dans le bidonville. On s'attend que beaucoup des grands brûlés, qui ont été hospitalisés, meurent des suites de leurs blessures.

Texto da matéria, disponibilizado na Internet pela publicação

OIL BLAST IN BRAZIL SHANTYTOWN KILLS 100

Reuters
Published: February 26, 1984

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 25— At least 100 men, women and children were reported killed today in an oil pipeline explosion that destroyed part of a shantytown on the outskirts of a southern Brazilian town.

The police in the town, Cubatao, 30 miles southeast of Sao Paulo, said about 100 bodies had been recovered and rescue workers were searching for more.

Another 150 people, some in critical condition, were taken to a hospital for treatment of burns, the Cubatao police said by telephone.

The explosion and pipeline rupture occurred close to the shantytown shortly after midnight, the police said. The fire spread quickly, destroying 300 huts, which the police said housed around 2,400 people.

The cause of the rupture of the pipeline, which passes within 50 yards of the hut settlement, was not immediately known. Flaming Oil Covers Swamp

The police said huts in the shantytown are built mostly out of wood and cardboard on stilts over a swamp. When the oil burst out of the pipeline and caught fire it spread quickly across the swampy water beneath the crude dwellings. They said that the situation was under control and that all fires had been put out.

The pipeline was carrying diesel oil from the nearby Atlantic Ocean port of Santos to a refinery in Cubatao belonging to the state oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro, they added.

Cubatao, just off the Santos-Sao Paulo highway, is one of the world's most polluted towns. A 1975 presidential decree declared it an ''area of critical pollution.''

Twenty-three factories, many producing petrochemicals, belch fumes into clouds over the town. Thousands of trees stand bare on surrounding hills and occasional pools of wastes in the area smoke. Birth defects and other health problems among the population, estimated at 90,000, are abnormally high.

The town lies at the foot of the 2,500- foot Serra do Mar range. The topography and the town's predominantly cloudy weather trap the fumes emitted by the factories.

photo of smoldering ruins of Cubatao

Texto da matéria, disponibilizado na Internet pela publicação

DEATH TOLL IN BRAZILIAN FIRE IS NOW PUT AT 508

UPI
Published: March 26, 1984

SAO PAULO, Brazil, March 25 — At least 508 people, most of them young children, died last month in an oil pipeline explosion that razed a swampland shantytown, according to a prosecutor's report published in Brazilian newspapers today.

The prosecutor's report was prepared as part of a police investigation into the Feb. 25 explosion. News reports at the time quoted the police as having said that at least 100 men, women and children were killed in the explosion in the slum of Sao Jose in Cubatao, 30 miles southeast of Sao Paulo,

The report, according to the newspaper accounts, said a conservative estimate of the death toll was 508, but it was highly probable that the number was much higher, possibly over 700.

Only 86 bodies were recovered after the fire swept through Sao Jose, a slum built on wooden stilts over a coastal swamp. Pipeline Is Ruptured

The blaze broke out after midnight when gasoline from a ruptured pipeline ignited, setting off a firestorm so intense it hurled wooden shanties high into the air and swept across a half- mile area.

High-octane gas that spewed over the shantytown burned at higher than 1,800 degrees, hot enough to incinerate bones and teeth, according to newsppaer accounts of the report, which was written by two public prosecutors, Marcos Ribeiro and Jose Passos. Investigators arrived at the death toll by estimating the number of shacks in the center of the firestorm, based on the number of legal electricity connections. Calculations of the number of children and adults killed were based on population density, the birth rate and school enrollment. Many Infants Die in Flames

They estimated that at least 300 children under three years of age died in the inferno.

''We did not find any child of less than seven among the burned bodies,'' the report said.

''There were over 300 children, aged 3 to 6, enrolled in the local community school, all resident in the slum,'' the report said. ''So far only 60 of these have been positively identified as alive.''

The report said an optimistic estimate would be that half the missing youngsters were living with surviving relatives.