Brazil Nightclub Fire Kills At Least 245 People
By MARCO SIBAJA
01/27/13 12:23 PM ET EST 
BRASILIA, Brazil — A blaze raced through a crowded nightclub
in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing 232 people as the air filled
with deadly smoke and panicked party-goers stampeded toward the exits,
police and witnesses said. It appeared to be the world's deadliest
nightclub fire in more than a decade.
Witnesses said that a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the fire.
Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone
that officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for
identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria, at the
southern tip of Brazil near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.
Bastianello said the that lowered the toll from 245 earlier believed killed.
Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as
shirtless, young male partygoers joined firefighters in wielding axes
and sledgehammers, pounding at windows and walls to break through to
those trapped inside. Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately
trying to find 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 Globo TV network.
Silva added that firefighters and ambulances responded quickly after
the fire broke out, but that it spread too fast inside the packed club
for them to help.
Michele Pereira, another survivor, told the Folha de S. Paulo
newspaper that she was near the stage and that the fire broke out after
members of the band lit flares.
"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they
stopped the show and pointed them upward. At that point the ceiling
caught fire. It was really weak but in a matter of seconds it spread,"
Pereira said.
Most
of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso
Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of
Santa Maria who raced the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.
He said survivors, police and firefighters told him a flare set by a
band member set the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze. "Large amounts of
toxic smoke quickly filled the room and I would say that at least 90
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 50 bodies were found
inside a bathroom. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the
exit door." 
"In the hospital I saw desperate friends and relatives walking and
running down the corridors looking for information. It was one of the
saddest scenes I have ever witnessed," he added.
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 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to
escape.
Beltrame also said he was told the club was filled far past its
capacity during a party for students at the university's department of
agronomy. The event featured a group called Gurizada Fandangueira, which
plays a driving mixture of local Brazilian country music styles. It was
not immediately clear if the band members were among the victims.
The fire led President Dilma Roussef to cancel a series of meetings
at a summit of Latin American and European leaders in Chile's capital of
Santiago, and was headed to Santa Maria, according to the Brazilian
foreign ministry.
"It is a tragedy for all of us. I am not going to continue in the meeting (in Chile) for very clear reasons," she said.
"Sad Sunday", tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state
of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and
that he would be in the city later in the day.
Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.
A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.
At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004. Seven members the band were sentenced
to prison for setting off the blaze.
A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on
Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling
decorated with branches, killing 152
A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100
people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band
Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and
ceiling.
Edited by Alias_Avi - Jan 27 2013 at 1:24pm
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