INCÊNDIO NA BOATE KISS NO BRASIL
REPERCUTE NO MUNDO
SANTA MARIA, Brazil — Brazilian police officials said Monday
they've made three detentions and are seeking a fourth person in
connection with a blaze that ripped through a nightclub in southern
Brazil over the weekend, killing more than 230 people.
Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Junior said at a news conference that the
detentions are for investigative purposes and those detained can be held
up to five days. He declined to identify those detained or the fourth
person sought, but the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora quotes lawyer Jader
Marques saying his client Elissandro Spohr, a co-owner of the club, had
been held.
The paper also says police detained two band members who
were on stage when the blaze broke out and were thought to have used
pyrotechnics in their act.
A military brigade official said Monday the death toll now stands at
231 people in the early Sunday blaze in the Kiss nightclub in Santa
Maria, a university town of about 260,000 people in southern Brazil.
Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors. Most
victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns.
Police have said they think the pyrotechnics ignited sound insulation
on the ceiling, while witnesses have reported a fire extinguisher
didn't work and that there was only one working exit. Many of the dead
were also found in the club's two bathrooms, where they fled apparently
because the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.
"It was terrible inside – it was like one of those films of the
Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another," said police inspector Sandro
Meinerz. "We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours
to take the bodies away."
Survivors and another police inspector, Marcelo Arigony, said
security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club.
Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of
the night before they are allowed to leave.
"It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith
because several security guards also died," Arigony told The Associated
Press.
Firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting
inside the Kiss nightclub because "there was a barrier of bodies
blocking the entrance," Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire
department, told the O Globo newspaper.
Authorities
said band members who were on the stage when the fire broke out later
talked with police and confirmed they used pyrotechnics during their
show.
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," he said. "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.
Survivor Michele Pereira told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that
she was near the stage when members of the band lit some sort of flare
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."
Police inspector Meinerz, who coordinated the investigation at the
nightclub, said one band member died after escaping because he returned
inside the burning building to save his accordion. The other band
members escaped alive because they were the first to notice the fire.
Television images from Santa Maria showed black smoke billowing out
of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who attended the university
party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the
hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside.
Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately
seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their
arms. About half of those killed were men, about half women.
Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked
screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be
done; officials said most of those who died suffocated within minutes.
"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.
The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.
A community gym soon became a horror scene, with body after body
lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family
members identified kin.
Outside the gym, police held up personal objects – a black purse, a
blue high-heeled shoe – as people seeking information on loved ones
crowded around hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.
The party was organized by students from several academic departments
at the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university
parties are common throughout Brazil.
Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the
toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim.
Brazil President Dilma Rousseff arrived Sunday 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," said Rousseff, who began her political career in the state where the tragedy took place.
Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the
Federal University of Santa Maria. said he was told the club had been
filled far beyond its capacity. He had gone to the city's Caridade
Hospital to help victims.
"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 AP.
"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."
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 1,000 and 2,000 people, and partygoers were pushing and shoving
to escape.
Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-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, Rio de
Janeiro.
Sunday's fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since
December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a
club in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.
In 2004, at least 194 people died in a fire at an overcrowded
nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Seven members of the band playing
at the club were sentenced to prison for starting the flames.
A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, killed 152
people in December 2009 after an indoor fireworks display ignited a
plastic ceiling decorated with branches.
Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100
people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the
1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the
walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.
The band performing in Santa Maria, Gurizada Fandangueira, plays a
driving mixture of local Brazilian country music styles. Guitarist
Martin told Radio Gaucha the musicians are already seeing hostile
messages.
"People on the social networks are saying we have to pay for what happened," he said. "I'm afraid there could be retaliation".
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