Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.
Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 225,000 people, though officials said the cause was still under investigation. Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.
Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance".
Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. "There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the paper. The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.
Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration. "The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."
Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning. It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it. When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working" He confirmed that accordion player, Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.
Police Major Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim; he said earlier that the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could leave.
Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, which is located at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders of Argentina and Uruguay. Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile. "It is a tragedy for all of us," Rousseff said.
Most of the dead apparently were asphyxiated, according to Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims. Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy department. Survivors, police, and firefighters gave the same account, of a band member setting the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze, he said. "Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least ninety percent of the victims died of asphyxiation," Beltrame told the Associated Press by telephone. "The toxic smoke made people lose their sense of direction so they were unable to find their way to the exit. At least fifty bodies were found inside a bathroom. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the exit door." In the hospital, the doctor "saw desperate friends and relatives walking and running down the corridors looking for information," he said, calling it "one of the saddest scenes I have ever witnessed."
Rodrigo Moura, identified by the newspaper Diario de Santa Maria as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between a thousand and two thousand, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.
Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a thirty-day mourning period, and Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, said officials were investigating the cause of the disaster.
The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro.
Rico says the cause is simple: stupidity...
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