Families bury disco tragedy victims

The number of people killed by a fire at an exclusive Peruvian disco rose to 28 as families began burying the young men and women, many of whom came from leading families.

Among the dead were the nieces of Peru’s first and second vice president and the daughter of a former congressman.

The 28th victim was a young woman who died after 17 hours in intensive care. Carbone said the victims’ ages ranged from 20 to 30.

The blaze, sparked by bar staff playing with fire, broke out at about 3am on Saturday at the unlicensed Utopia disco, a multi-level nightclub in an upmarket shopping mall in Lima’s wealthy Surco district.

A bartender had been launching flames into the air by spraying an aerosol can and lighting the jet of gas, witnesses said. Bar staff were also lighting lines of alcohol poured along the bar.

About 1,000 people were jammed into the disco, which officials said could only hold 500 and lacked marked emergency exits, fire extinguishers and a fire alarm.

The fire spread quickly and produced thick clouds of smoke that suffocated most of the victims. In the panic, several partygoers accidentally fed the flames when they tried to douse them with cocktails.

The disco was holding a so-called ‘‘zoo party’’ that featured a chimpanzee, a horse, a lion and a tiger on loan from a circus. Smoke killed the caged big cats.

Surco mayor Carlos Dargent declared three days of mourning, and Peru’s attorney general’s office has opened an investigation.

Public officials and religious leaders also called on Peruvians to put an end to the common practice of disregarding safety regulations.

The disco fire came months after 274 people died in Peru’s deadliest fire when a fireworks explosion in late December devoured four blocks of shops and decrepit apartment buildings in downtown Lima.

In December 1998, nine people were killed and 50 injured in a stampede in a crowded disco in a poor district of Lima, caused by a tear gas grenade, lobbed on to the dance floor.