Michele Cardoso, 20 year old, an undergraduate med student died in a fire which ripped all the way through a Brazilian disco posted a message on Facebook demanding aid.
She was in the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, southern Brazil, when a blaze started which left 234 people dead and 106 injured.
The medical student had been at revelry for neighboring university students with her sister Clarissa and her Joao Paulo. All died.
Michele Cardoso’s boyfriend Joao Paulo who also died in the fire was a student at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria
Investigators think the combustion began when a band’s small firecrackers show ignited foam sound insulating material on the ceiling.
One of the owners of the nightclub, Elissandro Spohr, lead singer of the band Gurizada Fandangueira, band’s vocalist, Marcelo Santos and the band’s security man were all arrested.
A call to take into custody has been issued for the other co-owner of the Kiss nightclub Mauro Hoffman, however he has not been found.
At 3.20am on Saturday morning, 50 minutes after the fire is reported to have started, Michele Cardoso posted a message on Facebook using her cell phone which read: ‘Fire at KISS help’. Over the following hours alarmed friends left increasingly desperate replies asking if she was alright, but her posts fell silent.
After Cardoso was confirmed as amongst the dead, one friend wrote on her page:
I never imagined that it was serious when I first saw her asking for help on Facebook in the early hours, until I woke up with a message from my mum telling me what had happened.
Most of the losses of Sunday morning’s disaster had died in the club’s toilets. They mistook the bathroom signs for those for the emergency exit.
More than 180 bodies were found inside the toilets.
A policeman said:
The scene was terrible, so said to see. There were so many young people, and the space was very small.
I took more than 180 people from the restrooms. They had run there trying to escape. The truck which was taking the bodies away had to come back five times to be filled up again. The scene was so sad.
Most victims died from smoke gasping instead of burns in what appeared to be the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than 10 years.
In the meantime, approximately 80 people wait in a critical condition in hospital after inhaling toxic fumes.
Police have also allegedly taken away fire extinguishers from the site following reports security guards and band members tried to use them to put out the fire but none were functioning.
Last night the club posted a declaration of their Facebook page claiming they were collaborating with police but insisting their workers “possessed the highest technical qualification’.
In this first moment, the priority of the house is providing all necessary assistance to the survivors and families of those who died. And this is being done by providing information and the assistance of a multidisciplinary team (psychologists, doctors, social workers etc.
Within hours a neighborhood gym was a shocking picture, with body after body lined up on the ground, to some extent covered with black plastic as family members identified them.
The festivity was organized by students from a number of academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria
The fire was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a blaze that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.
Michelle Cardoso is on Twitter here
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