SANTA MARIA, Brazil — A state police inspector leading the investigation into this weekend’s deadly nightclub blaze said penny-pinching by a band known for its onstage pyrotechnic displays may have cost more than 230 people their lives.
Inspector Marcelo Arigony said at a news conference Tuesday that members of the band knowingly purchased flares meant for outdoor use because they cost $1.25 apiece, compared with the $35 price tag for an indoor flare.
“The flare lit was for outdoor use only, and the people who lit them know that,” said Arigony. “They chose to buy those because they were cheaper than those that can be used indoors.”
The repercussions of that choice continued to send shock waves through Santa Maria, a college town of 260,000 people that’s been stunned by the early Sunday morning tragedy in the Kiss nightclub.
The Rio Grande do Sul state forensics department raised the death toll Tuesday from 231 to 234 to account for three victims who did not appear on the original list of the dead. Authorities said Tuesday that more than 120 people remained hospitalized for smoke inhalation and burns, with dozens of them in critical condition.
The blaze began about 2:30 a.m. during a performance by Gurizada Fandangueira, a country-music band that had made the use of pyrotechnics a trademark of its shows.
Police have said the club’s ceiling was covered with an insulating foam made from a combustible material that appeared to have ignited after it came in contact with a spark from a flare lit during the performance.
After a fire extinguisher malfunctioned, the blaze spread throughout the packed club at lightning speed, emitting a thick, toxic smoke. Because Kiss apparently had neither an alarm nor a sprinkler system and only one working exit, the crowd was left to search desperately for a way out.
About 50 of the victims were found in the club’s two bathrooms. Arigony said people headed to the bathrooms because the only lights in the dark, smoky club were coming from there, and the patrons mistook them forexits.
“There were diverse irregularities,” he said. “Any child could have seen that this establishment should not have been open.”
Angry locals marched through Santa Maria on Tuesday to demand justice for the dead, an unusual move in a country where public protests are rare. The demonstration interrupted the police news conference, even as Arigony pledged to investigate everyone involved in the tragedy - including the authorities charged with making sure such establishments are up to code, such as firefighters and city officials.
After the fire, several mayors across the nation said they would crack down on nightclubs and other venues in their cities.
The government of the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, promised tougher security regulations for nightclubs and other places where many people gather. Since the fire, a Rio de Janeiro consumer-complaint hot line has received more than 60 calls denouncing hazardous conditions at night spots, theaters, supermarkets, schools, hospitals and shopping malls around the state. Blocked emergency exits and nonexistent fire alarms and extinguishers top the list of the most common complaints.
G1, Globo television network’s Internet portal, said police searched two other Santa Maria nightspots owned by Mauro Hoffmann, one of the partners of the Kiss nightclub, for evidence that could help shed light on the investigation.
Monday night’s searches yielded no evidence, and the website reported that computers storing images recorded by the Kiss club’s security cameras have not yet been found. G1 cited a police investigator as saying the owners have insisted the club’s closed-circuit camera system hadn’t worked in months.
Both owners have been provisionally detained, along with two of the band members, and a judge has frozen the assets of the club’s owners pending the investigation.
Brazil has long turned a blind eye to safety and infrastructure concerns. The disaster, the worst fire of its kind in more than a decade, has also raised questions of whether Brazilian authorities are up to the task of ensuring safety as the country prepares to host next year’s World Cup and the 2016Olympics.
One of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, O Globo, published an editorial Tuesday saying it was time for action.
Rodrigo Martins, a guitarist for the group playing the night of the fire, told Globo TV network in an interview Monday that the flames broke out minutes after the employment of a pyrotechnic machine that fans out colored sparks.
He added that the club was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people.
“I thought I was going to die there,” Martins said. “There was nothing I could do, with the fire spreading and people screaming in front.” Information for this article was contributed by Marco Sibaja, Juliana Barbassa, Stan Lehman and Jenny Barchfi eld of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 01/30/2013