Fire and smoke rise from Brazil's Comandante Ferraz station in Almirantazgo Bay, in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. (Armada de Chile/Associated Press)

A fire at Brazil's research station in Antarctica on Saturday killed two navy personnel and forced the evacuation by helicopter of 44 people, the Brazilian navy said.

The blaze broke out in the morning in the machine room that houses generators at the Comandante Ferraz station, the navy said in an emailed statement.

Two navy officials at the base died and a third was injured in the fire, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's office said in a statement. Rousseff's office said the base will be reconstructed.

The navy statement said that 44 people at the station at the time of the fire were transferred to Chile's Eduardo Frei station. In a second statement, the navy said efforts to extinguish the fire were suspended because of bad weather. The firefighting crew was evacuated to the Chilean base and will return once the weather improves.

Defence Minister Andres Allamand told reporters the fire had "completely destroyed" the base, which started operations in 1984. The newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo quoted an unnamed official of the Brazilian navy saying the same thing.

A navy spokesman said those reports were "unfounded" and that as soon as the weather improves "we will evaluate the damage the fire caused to the station's structure."

Separately, the spokesman, who asked not to be identified, confirmed a report posted Saturday on the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper's website that a barge carrying diesel oil to the station sank during a storm in December.

According to the newspaper, the barge was carrying 10,000 litres of diesel in its storage tank when it capsized and sank about a kilometre from Comandante Ferraz. No one was on the barge, which was being towed to the base.

So far, none of the fuel has leaked and two ships are expected to reach the site in about a week to try to bring the barge to the surface before any leaks occur, the newspaper said without revealing how it obtained the information.