Brazil Nightclub Fire Kills At Least 230 People
Flames raced through a
crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people
as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding
toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be
the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.Witnesses said a
flare or firework lit by band members may have started the blaze in Santa
Maria, a major university city of about 225,000 people.Television images showed
smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended
a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at
windows and walls to free those trapped inside.Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of
the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a
hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies
blocking the entrance."Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately
seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their
arms."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.Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper
that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares 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."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."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.Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by
telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized
victim. Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification
to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, which is located at the southern tip of Brazil,
near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.An earlier count put the number of
dead at 245.Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference
that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases
they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he
said.Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived 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," Roussef said.Most of the dead apparently suffocated,
according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of
the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital
to help victims.Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond
its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy
department.Survivors, police and firefighters gave the same account of a band
member setting the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze, he said."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 Associated
Press by telephone."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. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the
exit door."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, 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.In 2004, at
least 194 people died in a fire at an overcrowded nightclub in Buenos Aires,
Argentina. Seven members of a band were sentenced to prison for starting the
flames.Several years later, in December 2009, a blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, killed 152 people
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".
Bangladesh factory fire concerns groups
International labour
rights groups called on Sunday for global clothing retailers to ensure adequate
safety measures for garment workers in Bangladesh after a blaze killed seven
employees at a small factory.Saturday's fire gutted Smart Exports Garment Ltd,
just two months after Bangladesh's worst ever factory blaze killed 112 workers
and injured 150 at Tazreen Fashions Ltd, a multi-storey garment workshop in
Dhaka's Ashulia suburb.In a joint statement issued after the latest blaze,
three organisations asked retailers and brands to sign a fire safety agreement
with Bangladesh."After more than two decades of the apparel industry
knowing about the risks to these workers, nothing substantial has
changed," the executive director of the International Labour Rights Forum,
Judy Gearhart, said in the statement."Brands still keep their audit
results secret. They still walk away when it suits them and trade unions are
still marginalised, weakening workers' ability to speak up when they are at
risk," she added. The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Clean Clothes
Campaign (CCC) also signed the statement.Another rights group, the Institute
for Global Labour and Human Rights (ILGHR), said on its website it had gained
access to the gutted factory and found seven women workers had been crushed to
death as employees tried to escape the fire.Firefighters and police said the
cause of the latest blaze was not yet known. Survivors said it could have been
caused by an electrical short circuit at the factory on the upper floor of a
two-storey building in the crowded Mohammadpur area.Kalpona Akter, Executive
Director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity told Reuters that two
garment factories had subcontracted orders to the factory's owner, Smart Export
Garments Ltd. She said the company was not a member of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association and had no license
from fire prevention or labour bodies.An official report into the Tazreen blaze
in November concluded it was the result of both sabotage and negligence. Bangladesh has about 4 500 garment factories and is the world's biggest exporter
of clothing after China. Clothing makes up
80% of its $24bn annual exports.
Davos warns on global economic crisis
The world's political
and business elite headed home on Sunday from this year's Davos forum with
warnings that while the worst of the financial crisis seems over there is still
much to be done.International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said in the
closing moments of the annual gathering in the snowy Swiss ski resort on
Saturday that she recommended the "do not relax principle" for the
coming year.Where for the two previous years a sense of crisis had hung over
the World Economic Forum, the mood was sunnier at the 2013 edition as speaker
after speaker said they were now cautiously optimistic."I feel the
circumstances in which I'm addressing you today are very different than 12
months ago," said Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti in his opening speech,
following a torrid year dominated by the euro crisis.European central banker
Mario Draghi meanwhile hailed 2012 as the year that the troubled single
currency was "relaunched", even as others were hailing him as the man
who had saved the eurozone from catastrophe.The Chinese economy's slowdown
seemed less serious than a year ago to the participants while the step back
from the fiscal cliff in the United States also eased minds.But as the 2 500
world leaders, financial officials, tycoons and journalists departed the
picture-postcard Alpine resort, they may have felt a chill that was not just
down to the subzero temperatures.Lagarde said the IMF's forecast of a
"very fragile and timid recovery for 2013" was based on
"eurozone leaders, the US authorities on the other hand and the Japanese
authorities making the right decisions".She added: "And that's what I
mean by 'do not relax' because some good policy decisions have been made in
various parts of the world. In 2013, they have to keep the momentum."The
head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Angel
Gurria, warned meanwhile that countries had exhausted most room for manoeuvre
in terms of fiscal and monetary policy."We should be very worried because
the lack of room for some of the more traditional tools has gone and we are
left with very few of these tools," he said.As in previous years the Davos
forum was partly hijacked by external events, particularly after British Prime
Minister David Cameron vowed to hold a referendum on European Union membership
by the end of 2017.The move threatened to cause a stir, with Cameron's European
counterparts worried about the effect the uncertainty would have on the euro's
already fragile recovery, but they left any rows for another day.The turmoil in
the Arab world also took centre stage for a time as officials including
Jordan's King Abdullah II urged "desperately needed" action over
Syria's civil war, though none came.Amid the cocktail parties and lavish
luncheons at Davos this year there was sometimes a "mood of
complacency", said Axel Weber, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS and former
head of Germany's Bundesbank."My biggest fear is that 2013 could be a
replay of 2012, another lost year," he said. "We shouldn't be
complacent, we haven't really fundamentally improved that much."Many were
still worried by the euro. The Deloitte financial group's global chief
executive Barry Salzberg told AFP he was "reasonably comfortable, with one
exception - and that is what's the impact on the US from Europe."Other officials expressed
fears that governments would increasingly lean on central banks, which have
often been the heroes of the fragile global recovery in the past two years,
instead of taking action themselves.But in many ways it was business as usual
at Davos, with world leaders huddling in private and corporate deals sewn up on
the sidelines, such as a $10bn shale gas deal between Ukraine and oil giant
Royal Dutch Shell.Even a noisy protest on Sunday by three topless,
pink-flare-waving women from a Ukrainian feminist group failed to shock - they
had targeted Davos the previous year too.
Gun control: Listen more, Obama says
President Barack Obama
urged gun control advocates to listen to views of rural Americans who use guns
for hunting and said bridging a cultural divide in attitudes to gun ownership
would be critical to his administration's push to curb gun violence. "If
you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you
went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of
your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of
that," Obama said in an interview with The New Republic magazine published
on Sunday.Obama made gun control a top priority for his second term after 20
children and six adults were killed by a gunman at a school in Newtown,
Connecticut in December. Obama spoke with The New Republic on 16 January, the
same day he announced he would put the full weight of his office behind urging
Congress to approve an assault weapons ban and background checks for all gun
buyers."Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the
reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in
rural areas," Obama said."So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I
think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several
months...and that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more
listening than they do sometimes," he said.Vice President Joe Biden is
leading the White House effort to talk to Americans about gun control proposals
and galvanise public support to pressure Congress to act. e addressed the issue
in Virginia on Friday. Gun ownership rights are enshrined in the US Constitution and past
efforts to restrict gun ownership have been blocked by gun owners, the National
Rifle Association and their supporters in Congress.
