Club fire kills 47 revellers

FORTY-SEVEN people were killed and 12 injured after a fire in a Caracas nightclub which had no emergency exits.

Flames quickly surrounded hundreds of revellers packed inside the tiny dance club, triggering a stampede to escape, fire officials said.

Faulty wiring, a kitchen fire or even a carelessly discarded cigarette were all possible causes of the blaze at La Guajira, said fire chief Rodolfo Briceno.

As many as 400 people were inside the club in the basement of the Hotel Venezuela in a densely packed commercial district.

“The fire began at the entrance. At first we thought it was a joke, but it seems the fire extinguishers didn’t work and the blaze grew fast,” said Jenny Cisneros, who suffered burns to her arms and legs.

“Everything went up in flames. There were so many people, everyone was trampled as they tried to get out. Nobody could breathe,” she said from her hospital bed.

Firefighters rescued people trapped inside the club and extinguished the flames early yesterday.

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. Police and fire officials cordoned off a blackened narrow entrance to the building and detectives began the grim task of identifying the dead.

It was the Venezuelan capital’s deadliest nightclub blaze since 1985, when 25 people died.