BRAZIL: Harrowing Holiday

On land, in the air and on the spree, it was a week of disasters for Brazil. Twenty miles north of Rio, a truck crammed with 86 southbound migrants missed a curve, plunged into a ravine, killed the driver and seven passengers. At Teresópolis, northeast of Rio, rain-loosened mud and rocks thundered down a hill, burying a freight train, a warehouse and four railhands. A Panair do Brasil DC-3 undershot the Uberlãndia airfield, 500 miles north of Rio, and crashed into a clump of trees, killing nine and injuring 23. But of all the week's disasters, the famed Rio Carnival was the worst. Rio's festival record: 22 dead and 4,612 injured—including 196 hit by cars, 330 tumbled off trams, 53 bitten (13 by other people, 33 by dogs, three by cats, two by rats, one by a monkey, one by a scorpion).