Rains in Drought Stricken Roraima Quench Fires
4/1/98
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Title: Rains in Drought Stricken Roraima Quench Fires
Source: The Associated Press via The New York Times Company
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/1/98
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- Long-awaited rains in Brazil's drought-stricken state
of Roraima have put out most of the wildfires that have blackened Amazon forest
and pastureland over the last three months.
The first heavy rains in six months started Tuesday, just a day after two
Caiapo Indian shamans performed a rain-making ritual at the Yanomami
reservation, home to one of the world's last Stone Age tribes.
It was one of several Indian reservations threatened by the blazes, which
charred 13,000 square miles - 15 percent of the state.
``If it's a coincidence or not, I don't know, but it certainly seemed to have
done the trick,'' said Alan Suassuna, spokesman for the Federal Indian Bureau
in Boa Vista, 1,550 miles northwest of the capital, Brasilia.
Suassuna estimated that the rains had extinguished 80 percent to 90 percent of
the flames.
He said authorities would have a more accurate assessment after reports from
the army, which was to inspect the area by air today.
Carlos Pereira Monteiro, head of a United Nations' team of firefighting experts
that arrived Monday, called the fires ``a environmental disaster without
precedent on this planet.''
By Tuesday, some 1,100 firefighters -- from Venezuela and Argentina as well as
Brazil -- were battling the blazes.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company