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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 02, 2002

47 Killed in Nightclub Fire in Venezuelan Capital

Flames quickly engulfed a tiny, downtown nightclub packed with hundreds of dancers but lacking emergency exits, triggering a panicky stampede and killing 47 people, fire officials and victims said Sunday.


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Flames quickly engulfed a tiny, downtown nightclub packed with hundreds of dancers but lacking emergency exits, triggering a panicky stampede and killing 47 people, fire officials and victims said Sunday.

Twelve people were injured in the late Saturday night blaze at La Guajira discotheque.

Faulty wiring, a kitchen fire or even a carelessly discarded cigarette were all possible causes of the blaze, which erupted near the club's entrance just before midnight Saturday local time, said Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno. Nearly all the dead succumbed to the smoke.

As many as 400 people were inside the discotheque, housed in the basement of the Hotel Venezuela in a densely packed commercial district, when someone yelled "Fire!," victims said.

The club was in two rooms with a total of about 1000 square feet.

Firefighters using oxygen tanks rescued people trapped inside the club and extinguished the flames early Sunday. They also evacuated another 500 people from the hotel and surrounding buildings inundated by smoke.

At daybreak, grieving relatives and friends stood outside the charred building in a poor district of the Venezuelan capital. The club's blackened, narrow entrance was roped off.

Detectives began the grim task of identifying the dead.

The combination of overcrowding, no emergency exits, improvised electrical wiring, unlicensed kitchen and scant fire code inspections is a common one in this city of 4 million, Briceno said. There are not enough resources to monitor hundreds of similar clubs, some of which are open illegally, officials say.

Saturday night's fire was the deadliest nightclub blaze in the Venezuelan capital since 1985, when 25 people perished in a discotheque fire, Briceno said.

Source: Agencies










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