A fire that broke out in a Brazilian nightclub has claimed at least 245 lives. The NY Times reports, "A fire ignited by a flare from a live band’s pyrotechnic spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early Sunday in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, leaving at least 245 people dead, police officials said."
Santa Maria has many universities, and, according to CNN, "The Kiss nightclub is popular with young people in Santa Maria, drawing between 2,000 and 3,000 people a night on the weekends." When the band's fireworks went off, the club's acoustic insulation caught fire around 2 a.m.
One clubgoer told Globo TV, "We looked up at the ceiling in front of the stage and it was catching fire... My sister grabbed me and dragged me out on the ground." The exit "was a "small door for lots of people to come out by." And her sister said, "We managed to see it in time and to get out quickly, before the smoke began to spread. The smoke spread really quickly, it didn't give enough time for people to get out. I think people started to feel unwell, and then they began to come out covered in black smoke stains." There's graphic video of victims' bodies; here's video from a newscast:
In 2003, a fire broke out at The Station nightclub in Warwick, Rhode Island when a pyrotechnics display from the band Great White set the club's sound insulation on fire. One hundred were killed and hundreds were injured.
