More than 230 Die in Brazilian Nightclub Fire

AFRIK UPDATE

   

Fire ravaged through the building killing 232 people, it has been claimed.

An eyewitness to the incident, which happened in the early hours of yesterday morning, said door staff initially did not understand what was happening and tried to stop people leaving through an exit door.

It was claimed that bouncers stopped people escaping because they could not prove they had paid their drinks bills.

In what appears to be the deadliest nightclub fire for a decade, people were reportedly screaming 'there's a fire' but were trapped inside the burning building.

Up to 2,000 people - mostly students - were in the Kiss nightclub om Santa Maria, southern Brazil, when the fire started.

While the official cause of the blaze has not been stated, local reports claim it was sparked by a firework set off during a band's performance.

                                                                                 

Witnesses said the club's ceiling, which contained sound insulation foam, caught fire after a pyrotechnic stunt went wrong.

Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, a 26-year-old medical student, told Zero Hora newspaper: 'People were screaming "there's a fire" but the security guards didn't budge and tried to keep the door shut.

'Five or six people knocked over one security guard and knocked down the door. It was the only exit.

                                                                              

'The first people to get out tried to pull out whoever was still inside. Hands and arms appeared from the curtain of smoke. We pulled out various people. I pulled out a girl by the hair. It was chaos, the worst desperation.'

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff yesterday cancelle her participation in a regional summit to travel back to Brazil following news of the crisis.

'I want to say to the people of our country and to the people of Santa Maria that at this moment of sadness we are together, and necessarily we will overcome,' said Ms Rousseff told reporters on the sidelines of a summit of Latin 

                                                                                   

American and European leaders, in Chile.

She was close to tears as she spoke and said that the government was 'mobilising resources' to deal with the tragedy.

'Sad Sunday', tweeted Tarso Genro yesterday, 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.

As news of the tragedy was made public, relatives of the victims began to appear at the scene. 

Hundreds of shocked and distraught grieving families gathered in the street, but were kept cordoned off away from the charred Kiss club.

                                               

The fire appeared to be among the world's deadliest in a nightclub since a 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in December, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling, killing 152.

A nightclub fire in the US 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. 

And a welding accident reportedly set off a December 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

Source:DM