Marchers seek tighter rules after Argentina club blaze

BUENOS AIRES -- Several hundred people marched yesterday near the Cromagnon Republic nightclub in Buenos Aires, two days after a fire that killed at least 175 people. Marchers demanded that city officials toughen safety codes for concert halls and rock clubs.

''We have to ensure this never happens again," said Jorge Viegas Mendes, whose 18-year-old son, Cristian, died in the blaze.

Anguished families struggled yesterday to identify the bodies of relatives killed in the fire. Many victims died after being trapped by locked emergency exits.

The club's owner, Omar Chaban, was being held by authorities pending an investigation into Thursday's inferno. Judicial officials said they were looking into assertions that the building was overcrowded at the time of the blaze, which also injured some 714 people.

Police were also looking for three business partners of Chaban's who have not contacted investigators since the fire.

Investigators said they believed that one of Argentina's worst disasters began when somebody set off a flare during the concert, igniting the foam ceiling of the Cromagnon Republic club while it was crowded with about 4,000 mostly teenage fans of the Argentine rock band Los Callejeros.

The building had a capacity of about 1,500, city officials said.

The fire triggered a stampede for the exits, as the concert hall filled with choking black smoke. Survivors told of people struggling to force open emergency exits, which authorities said were either tied shut or padlocked to prevent people from entering without paying. Many of the victims died of smoke inhalation, city officials said.

Dozens of families gathered at the city's morgues to identify the bodies of relatives, while volunteer psychologists circulated among the crowd, hoping to console relatives of victims.

Some were still searching for lost loved ones and frantically scanned lists of the injured, missing, and dead posted near the morgue.

Paula Espindolam said she had not been able to find her 30-year-old cousin two days after the blaze.

''She's on the list of the disappeared, but we don't know if she's dead or injured," she said. ''I've searched the hospitals, everywhere, but haven't been able to find her."

Officials said that more than a dozen people thought to have been inside the nightclub remain unaccounted for, and Argentine media published lists with descriptions of the missing, many of them teens, with details of clothing, tattoos, and hair and eye color in an effort to help locate them.

On a sweltering day in the Southern Hemisphere summertime, neighbors and concerned citizens carried bottles of water, plastic chairs, and food to family members and relatives awaiting news at morgues and hospitals.

''I wanted to find some small way that I could help," said Estefania Vonkorfs, 16, as she handed out bottles of water.