Tornadoes in Santa Catarina leave two dead and 20 cities in a state of emergency

Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.

Two tornadoes recorded during the storms on Tuesday (3) and Wednesday (4) in Santa Catarina left two people dead and led 20 municipalities to declare a state of emergency, according to a report by Folha de S.Paulo. In Rio Grande do Sul, two other deaths were recorded.

One of the victims in Santa Catarina is Jonathan Oliveira da Cruz, 20, an employee of a gas station on the BR-280 highway in Rio Negrinho, in the north of the state, who died when the building's roof collapsed. On Thursday (5), Civil Defense confirmed the second death: a resident of Xanxerê who suffered an electric shock after being struck by a broken high-voltage cable.

The tornadoes swept through Chapecó and Xanxerê, in western Santa Catarina, cities less than 50 km apart. In Chapecó, where the national weather institute (Inmet) recorded gusts of 126 km/h, the airport was damaged and remains closed indefinitely. According to Civil Defense, at least 4,600 homes were affected in the state, about half of them in Chapecó, and 92 municipalities reported some kind of damage. Classes in the state school system were suspended for two days.

In Rio Grande do Sul, Civil Defense confirmed a tornado in rural areas of Erval Grande, Itatiba do Sul and Barra do Rio Azul. The two deaths in the state — a 44-year-old motorcyclist swept away by floodwaters in Sagrada Família and a 71-year-old woman found near a river in Cacique Doble — occurred outside those towns, and the agency is still investigating whether they are related to the storms.

Since the 1st, at least 116 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul have reported human or material damage. About 50,000 people have been affected by the rains in the state, which counts 25 injured and damage to 6,496 homes, according to the tally cited by the newspaper.