25 die in Peru blaze fuelled by drinkers

AT least 25 people died and 100 were injured in the early hours of yesterday morning in a blaze started by bartenders who were doing tricks with fire at an unlicensed Lima nightclub.

Customers fueled the fire by trying to put out the flames with their drinks.

A lion and tiger part of a show that included live animals in cages were also killed.

The fire, coming just months after a far deadlier blaze that consumed a large part of the city, prompted calls for a crackdown on businesses that disregard safety regulations, a common practice in Peru. As well as not having a permit, the disco violated several fire safety regulations.

"We will punish with a hard and firm hand all the people who manage these establishments ," President Alejandro Toledo said.

The fire broke out about 3am in the Utopia, a multilevel night club in the Jockey Plaza, a shopping mall in the district of Surco, in southeastern Lima. Witnesses said the club was packed at the time and bartenders were entertaining guests in their usual manner on weekends with fire.

One survivor, Claudio Villanueva, said bartenders were launching plumes of fire into the air by spraying aerosol cans and lighting the jet of gas. He said others were igniting lines of alcohol poured along the bars.

Moises Gordillo, 30, who was also at the club, said he saw a bartender tossing a flaming object into the air, where it ignited the ceiling of the club. Many thought the ceiling fire was part of the show, he said, but as it spread customers tried to put it out with their drinks, fuelling it with the alcohol.

"People were yelling, 'don't run, don't run'". The music booth began burning and spewing out smoke. Then the lights went out and there was collective panic," he said. He estimated there were between 900 and 1,000 people in the club. But Jorge Leon, a fire department commander, said the hall could not hold more than 400.

Ximena Mariategui, a reporter for cable news Channel N who was at the disco, said there was a chimpanzee in the club, in addition to the lion and tiger. Two other caged lions and a horse were also in the entrance to the disco, she said. It was unclear what happened to the monkey and the animals outside.

Distraught relatives and friends of victims gathered at health clinics where the injured were treated and the Lima morgue.

The blaze came months after 274 people died in Peru's deadliest fire ever when a fireworks explosion in December devoured four blocks of shops and decrepit apartments in Lima.