DFA: No Pinoys hurt in Brazil night club fire


There were no Filipinos among the 200 people killed in a night club fire in Brazil on Sunday, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.
“Per report of our embassy in Brazilia, so far there are no Filipino casualties in the night club fire that hit Brazil,” DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez told GMA News Online via text on Tuesday.

The fire started around 2:30 a.m. at the Kiss nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria, an earlier report of the Reuters news agency said.

A flare allegedly lit by a member of the band or its production team set the ceiling of the night club ablaze where an estimated 500 people were present, police official Luiza Sousa said.

Most of the fatalities either died due to asphyxiation or from being trampled on.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Brazilian police investigating a nightclub fire that killed 231 people detained the owners of the club and two band members whose
pyrotechnics show authorities say triggered the blaze.
  
No charges were filed against the four men, but prosecutors said they could be held for up to five days as police press them for clues as to how the fire early Sunday morning could have
caused so many deaths.
   
Stunned residents in the southern city of Santa Maria attended a marathon of funerals beginning in the pre-dawn hours.

The tragedy comes as Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and 2016 Olympics, putting its safety standards and emergency response capabilities in the
international spotlight.

President Dilma Rousseff, who cut short a visit to Chile to fly to the scene of the disaster on Sunday, called for a minute of silence before addressing a meeting of newly elected mayors
in the capital, Brasilia.  
 
The Brazil fire is the worst to hit an entertainment venue since a fire on Christmas Day in 2000 engulfed a mall in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.

Brazil will be the host for two world events; 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

There are 720 Filipinos in Brazil based on the 2011 Stock Estimate of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas. - with reports from Reuters/Andrei Medina, VVP, GMA News

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