Buenos Aires Rock Club Inferno Claims 175 lives

[LauraBC]

To all our ARG posters... this is beyond horrendous

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - A flare thrown from the audience ignited a packed Buenos Aires rock club where locked exit doors trapped young New Year's revelers in smoke and flames, killing 175 people, officials said on Friday.

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 roughly 4,000 concert-goers.

"The fire spread in a minute and we were a mountain of people trying to escape," said survivor 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 a truck-sized emergency exit to keep people from sneaking into the club without paying.

"Because of greed, a lot 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 capital's underground rock scene who fled his club in the gritty working-class Once district.

City Hall said the Cromagnon Republic club had a permit for 1,100 people, but it did not know how many were at the concert. Local media estimated the crowd at between 4,000 and 6,000.

"They were condemned to walk into a trap," said Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez after inspectors found four of the six doors were tied shut with wire or padlocks.

Hospital lists showed most of the 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.

'GIVE US THE KIDS'

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," while Pope John Paul II sent his condolences to the victims' families in a letter to Church authorities.

Argentines awoke on New Year's Eve to scenes of horror on television: bodies lined up on the sidewalk, parents wailing and fainting and others frantically searching for loved ones.

Dazed survivors, blackened by soot, sat sobbing on the sidewalk outside the club or in hospitals.

"I'm looking for my 20-year-old brother. I have his picture and I don't know if it will help but I don't know what else to do," said Monica Alegre, sobbing outside the morgue.

Nearly 20 hours after the blaze, relatives lost patience in the oppressive summer heat and demanded authorities turn over their family members' bodies. But that may take a week.

"Give us the kids," shouted one woman at the morgue. "Stop doing autopsies. We already know what happened."

But others wanted more answers about the tragedy, deemed the worst fire in Argentina in decades.

"My 10-month-old baby is dead and my wife is missing. Somebody has to take responsibility for what happened to me," said a 30-year-old club security guard named Juan.

Fireworks are sold on streets all over Latin America for the New Year festivities with little regulation.

A flare fired a week ago in the same club caused a small fire that was quickly extinguished, barman Gustavo Albornoz told local television.

Before the concert, the band playing at the club had warned the crowd not to shoot flares, the mayor said.

A similar blaze in the United States in February 2003 killed 100 people when a pyrotechnics display at a Rhode Island set fire to soundproofing material. (Additional reporting by Ana Laura Mitidieri, Karina Grazina and Lucia Goncalves)

Copyright 2004 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=375193

OMG I hadn't heard about this... I'm glad they arrested the owner.. That is such a sad story..