The rapids and the overflowing of streams also caused landslides and floods in several municipalities of the metropolitan area such as those of Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso and Limpio, with hundreds of families who momentarily left their homes, according to the media and video images on social networks.
Police sources confirmed the death of three people, a grandmother and her two grandchildren, aged 6 and 8, after the displacement of land from a ravine that buried the precarious home they occupied in the La Chacarita neighborhood of Asuncion.
Two other residents of the same house, a 13-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy, were rescued alive from the mud and evacuated to the Asunción Trauma Hospital, said Commissioner Arnaldo Irala, head of the Fifth Police Station, quoted by the radio.
La Chacarita is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the capital's periphery which, due to its location on the shores of the Bay of Asunción, is at the mercy of cyclical river flooding Paraguay.
The storm also caused the fire of a tank of 4,000 cubic meters of alcohol, apparently after the impact of lightning in the middle of the storm at the Petropar de Villa Elisa plant, some 15 kilometers south of Asunción, the state company reported in a statement.
He added that the incident forced the evacuation of the neighborhood of up to 300 meters around the distribution plant while the affected tank is being cooled « so that the fire does not spread. »
« At this time more than a hundred firefighters continue working at the plant while the alcohol found in the damaged tank continues to burn in a controlled manner, » the report said.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter