ENVIRONMENT : Drought Turns Parts of Brazil to Desert : Livestock and crops dying; fires consuming thousands of acres.

When Ambassador Mohamed Abdel-Wahab woke one morning last week in this nation synonymous with dense rain forests and huge rivers, he could have sworn he was back in Egypt.

“The dryness was unbelievable,” said Abdel-Wahab, who had arrived in Brazil’s capital just days earlier. “I couldn’t breathe. My wife couldn’t breathe. It felt like it was even worse than the Sahara.”

He was right--the humidity was 9%, even lower than in the famous desert.

But his temporary discomfort is proving to be a graver problem for Brazil. Major regions of the country are in the midst of a months-long drought. It has wiped out large stocks of cattle and spawned huge forest fires. It also is imperiling the soybean, rice, snap bean and sugar cane crops.

Hardest hit has been the state of Sao Paulo, heart of the nation’s cattle and agriculture regions. Aside from a shower last week, much of the state has been without rain for four months. More than 80,000 cattle have perished in the last two weeks, milk production is down by 20%, and officials estimate agriculture in the area has suffered $250 million in damage.

Oriealeo Brunini, coordinator of the state Agro-Meteorological Service, said the drought has stunted sugar cane, and the parched soil cannot be prepared for other crops, resulting in temporary layoffs of hundreds of seasonal workers. “We don’t know how bad it’s going to be, but it is bad,” Brunini said. “The coffee crop could also be affected.”

That could be a serious blow to the world’s largest coffee-producing nation. More than 40% of next year’s crop has already been wiped out by a June frost.

The drought has been so deep that the water level in Paraibuna Dam has dropped the equivalent of the height of a 30-story building, revealing ruins of bridges and old colonial structures in Redencao da Serra intentionally flooded by the dam in 1975.

The drought has also hit tourism in the picturesque city, which has dropped 70%, said Mayor Thomaz Dias, whose city lies 100 miles east of Sao Paulo. “We live principally off the use of the dam,” Dias said. “With the drought, we are forced to live with this desert.”

Nearby residents of Artur Nogueira, Sumare, Hortolandia and Campinas have gone to water rationing.

In the state’s Rio Preto region, raging fires have burned an area the size of 2,000 football fields, including 8,000 yards of communications wire and 55 transmission towers. The resulting smoke and dust have pushed up pollution levels in the city of Sao Paulo so much that residents now report to work with dust masks.

Farther south, the Pantanal’s Mato Grosso do Sul, a 125,000-square-mile area known for its flora and fauna, has been so parched that some parts have converted to desert, permanently.

In areas once covered by annual floods, all that is left are skeletons of fish and small alligators. Fish flap desperately for oxygen in vanishing pools. Antonio Castro Lima said residents took five tons of dying fish from a pond on his ranch.

In Brasilia, low humidity caused government offices and schools to shut; hundreds of children were admitted to hospitals for respiratory problems.

Meantime, an 8-day-old blaze has torched more than half of the 75,000-acre Brasilia National Forest and now threatens the city’s water supply as it edges to the Santa Maria Dam, one of Brasilia’s two primary water sources.