Three detained for questioning in Brazil nightclub blaze
Relativies and friends of Tamise Cielo, one of the victims of the Kiss nightclub fire, gather around her coffin during her funeral at Santa Rita cemetery in Santa Maria, Brazil, January 28, 2013. More than 230 people -- many of them college students -- died in the blaze. / JEFFERSON BERNARDES/AFP/Getty Images
SANTA MARIA, Brazil Brazilian police say they've made three arrests and are seeking a fourth person in connection with a nightclub fire that killed more than 230 people.
Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Jr. said at a Monday press conference that the arrests are for investigative purposes. He says the detentions have five-day limits.
More than 200 die in Brazil nightclub fire
A night of fire and horror in Brazil
He declined to identify those arrested or the fourth person sought.
More than 230 people died early Sunday during the fire at a university party in southern Brazil.
The Zero Hora newspaper quotes lawyer Jader Marques as saying his client Elissandro Spohr, a co-owner of the club, was arrested. The paper also says two band members were arrested.
Police have said they think a band's pyrotechnics show ignited sound insulation on the ceiling, causing the blaze.
The bodies of the young college students were found piled up just inside the entrance of the Kiss nightclub, among at least 233 people who died in a cloud of toxic smoke after a blaze enveloped the crowded locale within seconds and set off a panic.
Hours later, the horrific chaos had transformed into a scene of tragic order, with row upon row of polished caskets of the dead lined up in the community gymnasium in the university city of Santa Maria.
Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors.
The gathering was a party organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.
In a statement, the university said that at least 101 of the 229 fatalities identified so far were students.
Neri Paniss, a professor at the university, said that a large majority of the victims were the school's alumni. "It's not just now, at this moment of loss that they will be missed, but each day," Paniss said.
Family members of those killed walked around the gym in a daze Sunday evening, shuffling between caskets or holding one another and weeping as they identified loved ones and tried to make sense of what had happened.
Elaine Marques Goncalves lost her son Deivis in the fire. Another son who attended the college party at the nightclub, Gustavo, was barely alive after suffering two cardiac arrests caused by smoke inhalation.
She learned of the blaze after the mother of her sons' friends called her early Sunday.
"My boys were not home and I had no news. I turned on the TV — the tragedy was all over the television," she said at the makeshift morgue. "All I knew was they had gone to a club, I didn't know which one. I kept saying: 'Where do I start? Where do I go?'"
The first funerals for victims were held Monday.
Relatives and friends carry the coffins of two brothers, Pedro and Marcelo Salla, who died in the Kiss nightclub fire, as they prepare for their burial in Santa Maria, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013.
/ AP Photo/Felipe DanaAs the city in southern Brazil prepared to bury the 233 people killed in the conflagration caused by a band's pyrotechnic display, an early investigation into the tragedy revealed that security guards briefly prevented partygoers from leaving through the sole exit, and the bodies later heaped inside that doorway slowed firefighters trying to get in.
"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."
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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," he told The Associated Press.
Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble entering the club 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.
Flowers are placed at the doors of the Kiss nightclub, after a fire ripped through the premises, January 27, 2013 in Santa Maria, Brazil.
/ JEFFERSON BERNARDES/AFP/Getty ImagesPolice inspectors said they think the source of the blaze was a band's small pyrotechnics show. The fire broke out sometime before 3 a.m. Sunday and the fast-moving fire and toxic smoke created by burning foam sound insulation material on the ceiling engulfed the club within seconds.
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.
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Flammable material on the walls. Band uses pyrotechnics (probably illegally). No building sprinkler system. Overcrowding. Poorly marked exits, and not enough of them. It really is the exact event happening yet again.
I have studied The Station fire, and I have some opinions. Certainly the band was nuts to use that spark-throwing display, which caused the fire. But I only put about 20% of the blame on the person that made the decision to use the spark display. The real blame was the fact that the club owner created a deathtrap by using that super-flammable soundproofing material on the walls (the non-flammable type is more expensive). Furthermore, the club was operating under an exception to the rule requiring sprinklers, but since the club had major renovations that exception was not valid.
If it hadn't been the sparkler setting off the fire, it could have been anything else---a hot light fixture, an electrical short, etc.
Club owners cannot build deathtraps, entice people to fill them, and not be held responsible when tragedy strikes.
CHUCK769, I only mention this because there is precedent. I didn't catch it here but PBS and CNN also report that the Kiss Club in question had double the permitted occupancy. I don't know what the rules are in Brazil but over here there would have been very unpleasant conversations in any case where the fire marshall found out - even if there was no fire.