Fire in nightclub kills more than 245 people

[LadyBlue]

A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

That toll would make it one of the deadliest nightclub fires more than a decade.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. Officials earlier put the death toll at 180.
www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/27/fire-in-nightclub-kills-at-least-0-people-injures-200-in-southern-brazil/

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[LadyBlue]

Security guards blocked only exit

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.

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 Junior said at a Monday press conference that the arrests are for investigative purposes. He says the detentions have five-day limits.

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. Police have said they think a band's pyrotechnics show ignited sound insulation on the ceiling, causing the blaze.
www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/27/fire-in-nightclub-kills-at-least-0-people-injures-200-in-southern-brazil/

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