Flare blamed in Argentina club blaze
BUENOS AIRES -- A flare thrown from the audience is being blamed for igniting a packed nightclub in Buenos Aires where locked exit doors trapped young New Year's revelers in smoke and flames, and resulted in 175 people being killed, officials said yesterday.
Children and babies were among the victims in Thursday night's blaze, which injured at least 714 people. The flare sent burning debris and black smoke into a crowd of about 4,000 concertgoers.
''The fire spread in a minute, and we were a mountain of people trying to escape," said Ariel Monges, 25, who lost a cousin and was searching for a friend at a hospital.
Buenos Aires Mayor Anibal Ibarra said the tragedy was made worse by the owner's decision to lock emergency exits to keep people from sneaking into the club without paying.
''Because of greed, a lot of people who could have been saved lost their lives," Ibarra said.
Police said they arrested the club's owner, Omar Chaban, a well-known promoter of the underground rock scene in Buenos Aires.
City Hall said the club, the Cromagnon Republic, had a permit for 1,100 people, but it did not know how many were at the concert. Local media estimated the crowd at 4,000 to 6,000.
''They were condemned to walk into a trap," Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez said after inspectors determined that four of the six doors had been tied shut with wire or padlocked.
Hospital lists indicated that most victims were in their teens and 20s. Some fans had brought their children to a makeshift nursery in the women's bathroom or held babies on their laps during the concert, witnesses said.
''There was black smoke everywhere. People started pushing, and we all fell down. You had to drag yourself along the floor, but people fell on top of each other," said Gaston, 22, a survivor who was looking for friends in the morgue.
Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation after a group fired a flare into the ceiling at 11 p.m., igniting soundproofing and turning the venue into an inferno. Officials said 102 of the injured were critical.
The government declared three days of mourning and ordered nightclubs in the capital closed on New Year's Eve.
President Nestor Kirchner, on vacation in Patagonia, said through his spokesman that he was ''very sad and distressed."
Argentines awoke yesterday to scenes of horror on television: bodies lined up on the sidewalk, parents wailing and fainting, and other people frantically searching for loved ones. Dazed survivors, blackened by soot, sat sobbing on the sidewalk outside the club or in hospitals.
