An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror, with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and on the street.
At least 233 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university, police officials said. By Sunday evening, the authorities had released a preliminary list of the dead.
As Simon Romero reports, a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Rescue workers continued to haul bodies from the still-smoldering building on Sunday.
Amateur videos posted to YouTube showed scenes of chaos as medics scurried over the bodies of victims who appeared to be unconscious, checking for signs of life.
Officials and witnesses say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sowing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.
“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.
Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club apparently showing the pyrotechnic display on stage.
A short time later, another photo that was said to be taken outside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing from the front entrance.
BOATE KISS PEGANDO FOGO! http://t.co/tdV2DO4q
— Boatos SM ® #LUTO (@BoatoSM) 27 Jan 13
The fire quickly engulfed the building.
Firefighters and volunteers who used T-shirts to protect themselves from the smoke struggled to pull people from the burning building.
Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and a hospital.
As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed in the fire.
In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the nightclub said that its operations are on hold and that it would assist the authorities with an investigation. “We would still like to reiterate that our staff has the highest technical qualifications and was properly trained and prepared for any contingency,” it added.
Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst.
In 2003 in Rhode Island, also fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead in 2009.
And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.
The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil
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