Brazil fire blamed on 'Out-Door Flares', as mourners call for Justice!!

A fire ignited by a flare from a band’s pyrotechnics spectacle swept through a night club filled with hundreds of university students early on Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern brazil, killing at least 233 people.  The "fast-moving fire" roared through a crowded, windowless nightclub in southern Brazil, filling the air in seconds with flames and a thick, toxic smoke that killed the 'party goers', many of whom were caught in a stampede to escape.



Health workers hauled bodies from the club, called Kiss, to hospitals in Santa Maria all through Sunday morning. Some of the survivors were taken to the nearby city of Porto Alegre to be treated for burns. 



Inspectors believe the blaze began when a band’s small pyrotechnics show ignited foam sound insulating material on the ceiling, releasing a putrid haze that caused scores of university students to choke to death. Most victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns in what appeared to be the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.






Survivors and the police inspector Marcelo Arigony said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club. 



According to eye witness account, security guards had blocked the club door and initially prevented people from escaping because they thought a fight had broken out inside, and that customers would use the opportunity to leave without paying their bar tabs. Only after they realized that a fire was raging inside did the security guards let the crowd go. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

But a reliable source, said the guards didn’t appear to block fleeing patrons for long. ‘‘It was chaotic and it doesn’t seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died,".

fire-fighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because ‘‘there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance.

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.

Police inspector Sandro 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.

‘‘It was terrible inside — it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another,’’ said Meinerz. ‘‘We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away.’’

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 were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours a community gym was 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.

Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors. About half of those killed were men, about half women.

The party was organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.

The fire has been blamed on 'out-door flares'.