This aerial photo from Friday, Jan. 5, 2007, shows roof damage caused near Belair Road and Stephanie Ann Street in New Iberia, La., as a result of Thursday's tornado that killed two people just outside New Iberia Thursday. (AP Photo/Travis Spradling, Pool)

2 killed by reported tornado in Louisiana

NEW IBERIA, La. - Powerful storms killed at least two people, flooded streets and ripped apart homes as they swept from Louisiana through South Carolina on Friday.

Much of the worst damage was in Louisiana's Iberia Parish, where what appeared to be a tornado hit the New Iberia area just before 4 p.m. Thursday.

"We were just sitting and watching a movie, and then all of a sudden the wind started blowing and it got really bad," said Joyce Firmin of Iberia Parish. "It just sounded like a bunch of trucks or an airplane or something was coming toward the house."

Firmin's daughter, 14-year-old Jaci, said she could hear branches snapping and power lines popping during the storm. "My ears were popping a lot," she said. "When we came out, everything was down."

The storm killed a woman and 6-year-old girl in their home, the Iberia Parish Coroner's Office said, and at least 15 other people were injured.

Ten more people were hurt when the storm reached east-central Mississippi's Kemper County late Thursday and early Friday, authorities said.

"There's more damage out here than what we initially thought," Ben Dudley, Kemper County's emergency management director, said after trips to communities of Blackwater and Damascus on Friday. "We're looking at eight to 10 homes destroyed and several with major damage."

Carnell Newton said most of those injured in Blackwater were his relatives — including a woman who suffered a head injury and was upgraded from critical to serious condition Friday.

"They were in a doublewide (mobile home) and it just exploded," Newton said.

Laquita Clark, 21, said the storm knocked her two-bedroom home off its foundation and turned it into a "disaster area." She had been next door at the time.

Five more homes and businesses were damaged in southern Mississippi's Stone County.

In northwest South Carolina, 15 people were injured when a suspected tornado piled cars on top of each other Friday afternoon outside an elementary school, officials said. No students were injured.

In Alabama, several vacant mobile homes parked outside a mobile home plant in Hamilton were damaged and power lines were down, officials said. Trees were down across stretches of Georgia.

From a Louisiana hospital, Steven Bruno described how he was flipped over twice while furniture and glass flew around his mobile home on Thursday. His girlfriend, who is six months pregnant, was hospitalized for fetal monitoring, and the hospital gown he was wearing is now the only thing he owns, he said.

Whether his home and others in southern Louisiana were hit by a tornado won't be determined until storm surveys are conducted.

In New Orleans, city workers had been dispatched early to clean drains and prepare for possible flooding ahead of the heavy rain.

Southern Louisiana has been pounded by major storms that bumped its December rainfall total to more than 10 inches, nearly twice the normal average, and forecasters on Friday warned that more rain was coming.

"More showers and thunderstorms are on the way Saturday afternoon and evening as we get another cold front coming through. We're in a progressive pattern — almost like clockwork, every three days we'll get a front through," said weather service forecaster Kent Kuyper.

Firefighters look for the remains of three missing people in Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro state, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007. Mudslides and flash floods triggered by torrential downpours have killed at least 27 people and driven thousands from their homes over the past five days in Southeastern Brazil, officials said Friday.(AP Photo/Alexandre Carius, Tribuna de Petropolis)

Brazil's rain-related death toll hits 31

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Firefighters recovered the body of a woman whose home was engulfed in a mudslide, and her husband died from injuries Saturday, as the death toll from days of heavy rains in southeast Brazil reached 31.

Floods and mudslides have driven thousands of people from their homes over the past week, and more rains were forecast for the weekend.

Firefighters retrieved the body of a 62-year-old woman beneath mud that engulfed her hillside home in the city of Novo Friburgo, some 95 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Her husband died of injuries in the hospital, raising the death toll in that city to 12, according to a Civil Defense spokeswoman. Twenty-six people have died in Rio de Janeiro state, about 310 miles northeast of Sao Paulo.

Authorities Saturday reported the deaths of two other people in mudslides in Sao Paulo state. On Friday, three people died when a bus skidded out of control, an accident authorities blamed on the heavy rains.

The mudslides and flash floods have forced more than 12,000 people to abandon their homes for shelter in churches, schools, gymnasiums and other public buildings, officials said.

Most of the victims were poor people who live in shantytowns built precariously on hillsides.

Mudslides are a chronic problem in Rio de Janeiro state during the summer rainy season. Clearing grass and shrubs from the hillsides to make way for shantytowns causes erosion, leaving the communities vulnerable to mudslides.

In recent years, the state government has attempted to remove people from the most dangerous hillsides, but people with no access to affordable housing continue to build crude brick houses on the steepest slopes.

Front end loaders remove snow from US 40 where a huge avalanche swept two cars off the road in the Arapaho National Forest, Colo., Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007, about 50 miles west of Denver. Eight people were rescued from the buried vehicles and all were taken to area hospitals, said state Patrolman Eric Wynn. Details of their conditions were not available. (AP Photo/Will Powers)

Huge avalanche buries cars on Colorado pass

DENVER - A huge avalanche buried cars on a mountain pass Saturday on the main highway to one of the state's largest ski areas, shortly after crowds headed through on the way to the lifts, authorities said.

Seven people had been rescued and one was taken to a hospital, said Stacey Stegman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

"Our crews said it was the largest they have ever seen. It took three paths," Stegman said of the massive slide on U.S. 40 near 11,307-foot Berthoud Pass, about 50 miles west of Denver on the way to Winter Park Resort.

The slide buried at least two cars, state Patrolman Eric Wynn told CNN.

Crews were probing the area for other vehicles, including any that may have gone off the road, Stegman said.

The avalanche hit between 10 a.m. and 10:30 and was about 100 feet wide and 15 feet deep, Stegman said. The area usually has slides 2 to 3 feet deep because crews trigger them before more snow can accumulate, said Spencer Logan of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

Three snow storms in as many weeks have dumped more than 4 feet of snow on parts of Colorado and authorities haven't had time to test all slide areas, Spencer said.

"This is a tremendous amount of snow to come down the mountain for us," Stegman said.

Mile Cikara, who was headed to Winter Park to ski, told KMGH-TV in Denver that he joined others furiously digging out victims. "I along with 30 other people grabbed shovels and started digging to get people out. I had a shovel but people were using their hands, skis, ski poles, whatever, to dig out," until rescue teams arrived, he said.

The timing meant most traffic headed to the ski area had already passed through.

"Good thing it didn't happen a couple of hours earlier," said Darcy Morse, a Winter Park spokeswoman. On an average January weekend day, the resort draws more than 10,000 skiers and snowboarders, with lifts opening at 8:30 or 9 a.m.

Wynn said the pass was closed and would not reopen until Sunday at the earliest.

Third snowstorm blows into Colorado, Plains

DENVER - The third snowstorm in as many weeks barreled into Colorado on Friday, blanketing the Denver area with up to 8 inches of new snow and further hampering efforts to rescue thousands of cattle stranded by last week's blizzard.

Crews worked around the clock to clear roads so residents could get to stores for food and medicine. Several school districts canceled classes because winds gusts up to 30 mph had reduced visibility.

In Kansas, an estimated 60,000 people were still without power after more than a week, and the new storm was headed their way after dumping nearly a foot of snow in the foothills west of Denver.

An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 utility customers were without power Friday night in Nebraska, the utility company said.

In hard-hit southeastern Colorado, no more than 1 inch of new snow was expected, but the winds made road clearing difficult.

The roofs of two buildings — the Walsh post office and a restaurant in Elizabeth — collapsed Friday under the weight of the accumulated snow. No injuries were reported, the state Division of Emergency Management said.

Agriculture officials were still trying to determine how to deal with the carcasses of thousands of livestock that were killed in the blizzard or starved afterward.

An estimated 3,500 cattle are believed to have died on rangeland in six southeastern Colorado counties alone, said Leonard Pruett, the region's agriculture extension agent for Colorado State University.

"The magnitude of the snow out here is astounding," said Ed Cordes, project manager for Pioneer Pork, which has about 7,500 sows and 4,000 young pigs on a ranch covering about three square miles near Springfield, about 200 miles southeast of Denver.

American Humane Association workers arrived Friday to help rescue and feed young pigs that might have been orphaned because they became separated from their mothers or whose mothers' milk production declined, Cordes said.

Owners of feedlots, where range cattle are taken before slaughter, were still calculating their losses.

Luke Lind, a vice president of Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, which has 10 feedlots in Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma, said the mortality rate could be "significant," but he declined to give specific numbers. Five Rivers had 60,000 cattle in pens in the Lamar, Colo., area alone, he said.

In a massive effort to save stranded rangeland cattle, the Colorado National Guard conducted a three-day airlift that dropped about 3,000 hay bales to herds spotted on the rangeland. Troops trucked in hay and smashed ice on watering holes for livestock trapped and weakened by the earlier blizzard.

While that likely saved livestock, the survivors still face the threat of lung infections from the stress of the storm and dehydration, Pruett said.

The cold, windy conditions Friday could hurt early season calves, as well, he said.

"The mother cows out there are in good shape," Pruett said. "We had plenty of grass in the summer and fall, so they went into the storm in good condition and that makes all the difference in the world. But they're not going to stay in good condition without getting some feed because they're going downhill pretty rapidly."

In Washington, Sen. Wayne Allard (news, bio, voting record) and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (news, bio, voting record) introduced bills Friday to help speed financial aid to ranchers who have lost livestock in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Among the many effects of the blizzards, the price of hay has jumped from $150 a ton to $210 a ton, and much grazing land was still inaccessible, Pruett said. Ranchers will depend more on hay and other supplemental feed to keep livestock alive because the grass they normally eat is buried in snow, he said.

The snow should help Colorado's recovery from several years of drought by increasing the mountain snowpack, which supplies most of the state's water.

Florida fears citrus-leaf-eating butterfly

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - An Asian butterfly known for ravaging the leaves of young citrus trees has spread from the Dominican Republic to other Caribbean islands and could soon strike fruit producers in Florida, agriculture experts said.

The lime swallowtail butterfly was spotted in the Dominican Republic three years ago — the first recorded sighting in the Western Hemisphere, said Brian Farrell, a Harvard biology professor who led the field study that found it.

The insect has since appeared in Jamaica and Puerto Rico, and U.S. officials are concerned it could next hop to the United States and threaten Florida's $9 billion citrus industry. U.S. officials have criticized the Dominican government for not trying to eradicate the butterfly.

"I don't think the (Dominican agriculture) ministry is doing anything. They don't see it as a problem," said Russell Duncan, of the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Santo Domingo.

U.S. officials worry the pest could be brought into the U.S. by a tourist or with illegally transported fruit. Known as a strong flier suited for island hopping in Asia, the butterfly might also manage the trip on its own.

It is not known how the butterflies reached the Caribbean, Farrell said.

Dominican officials say the butterfly problem is under control and there is no need for a widespread eradication campaign. "This isn't a big problem for us," said Damian Andujar, director of the Dominican Agriculture Ministry's fruit department.

The butterflies, distinguished by red and yellow wing markings and bright blue eyespots, have such a taste for citrus leaves that they often strip trees of all but their branches.

A year after they were discovered in the Dominican Republic, an infestation destroyed more than 4,000 young trees owned by produce giant Grupo Rica — 3 percent of its nursery stock, said Felipe Mendez, a company official.

Caterpillars ate every leaf on many of the trees they attacked, Mendez said. Damage to the company's orchards in the country's south has since been contained by workers trained to pick leaves at the first sign of butterfly eggs.

"We realized we had a natural enemy," Mendez said.

Workers in Jamaica also have been trying to kill the caterpillars by hand. An aerial spraying campaign has not been attempted for fear of damaging nearby beekeepers' hives, Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke told the Jamaica Observer.