More than 230 partygoers when a blaze roared through a crowded, windowless nightclub in southern Brazil at the weekend.
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.
Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave. But Mr Arigony said the guards did not 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,” he said.
Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub 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.
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 co-ordinated the investigation at the nightclub, said one band member died after initially 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 on top of one another,” said Mr Meinerz. “We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away.”
Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2.15am “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,” he said.
“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.
Santa Maria mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period.