BRAZIL was supposed to be celebrating this week: the first of the stadiums for next year’s football World Cup staged a debut match and a party was planned to mark 500 days till kick-off. Instead the country is in mourning, the party cancelled. Early on January 27th a fire in a nightclub, Kiss, in Santa Maria, a university town in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, killed 235 people, mainly students. Most of the more than 100 injured are in a critical condition. President Dilma Rousseff, visibly upset, rushed back from a summit in Chile and declared three days of national mourning.
A catalogue of negligence caused Brazil’s most lethal fire for more than 50 years. It was started by a spark from a flare lit by the band performing in the early hours. That set light to soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Flames spread fast, releasing toxic fumes and short-circuiting the power supply, casting the venue into darkness. Security guards stopped the first to flee, apparently believing they were trying to bunk without paying: in Brazil, club patrons run up tabs and pay on the way out.
Brazil Police say around 1,000 people were in the club, whose capacity was 690, and that there were no working fire escapes. Most of the deaths were by crushing or asphyxiation. Dozens of bodies were found in the bathrooms, presumably mistaken for exits in the panic. The crush at the door was so severe that firefighters and bystanders had to tear down a wall to get in. |