\u201cI arrived home and found myself without a roof over my head,\u201d the 51-year-old told AFP. \u201cI\u2019m homeless and rebuilding will take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Authorities said 90% of the town suffered damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt destroyed everything. It destroyed the town, houses, schools. What will become of us?\u201d Roselei Dalcandon said as she stood by a pile of rubble that used to be her shop.<\/p>\n
The tornado killed at least six people, the Parana state government said. Firefighters and medical personnel treated 750 injured people, including nine who were seriously hurt.<\/p>\n
One person was missing but the number could rise as rescue efforts continue.<\/p>\n
Rescue teams searched through piles of rubble looking for survivors or bodies. A shelter was set up in a nearby town.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a war scene,\u201d Fernando Schunig, head of the Parana Civil Defence agency, told the news outlet G1.<\/p>\n
He said the likelihood of more fatalities is high because the twister hit the centre of the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen these events hit an urban area, the damage is major. It is very lethal,\u201d Schunig said.<\/p>\n
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said a team of ministers and disaster relief experts were headed to the town, as he expressed \u201csolidarity\u201d with those affected.<\/p>\n
An alert for dangerous storms was in effect for all of Parana as well as Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, according to weather authorities.<\/p>\n
Other cities in Parana and neighbouring states were also hit by strong winds, storms and hail from a violent weather pattern sweeping through the region.<\/p>\n
Last year, southern Brazil suffered severe flooding that left more than 200 people dead and two million displaced in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.<\/p>\n
It was one of the worst natural disasters in the recent history of Brazil and experts say global warming played a role in the floods.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI arrived home and found myself without a roof over my head,\u201d the 51-year-old told AFP. \u201cI\u2019m homeless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1443,806,29893,575,14167,41008,273,24176,10933,29510,702,3375,89404,5840,3025,111,139,69,384,3048,147,4739,171,18085,2951],"class_list":["post-129039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-about","tag-as","tag-authorities","tag-brazil","tag-destroyed","tag-destroys","tag-environment","tag-hundreds","tag-injured","tag-injures","tag-it","tag-killed","tag-kills","tag-least","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-said","tag-science","tag-six","tag-southern","tag-tornado","tag-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}