Rotten Mango - #339: Nightclub Turns Into GAS CHAMBER Killing 242 University Students In One Night
Episode Date: February 25, 2024Gustavo stumbled out of the nightclub, barely keeping balance. He felt like he was hallucinating. He noticed people looking at him with very concerned looks – what? Did he have something on his face...? He looked back up to a random man rushing towards him with a pail of water. He threw the water onto Gustavo’s arms. Everyone was acting so strange… Then a woman yelled at him, “HEY! You need to call an ambulance!—There’s something wrong with your body!” Gustavo was taken aback but reassured the woman, “NO! Don’t worry. It’s just my shirt—I tore it on the way out of the club; that’s all…” He was sure of it. He could feel his shirt in that moment, shredded and hanging off his body. Every time he took a step forward or turned around to look at another stranger yelling at him, he could feel it swaying, hitting other parts of his torso. The woman looked at him very concerned, “Sir. You’re not… wearing a shirt.” Gustavo walked towards a streetlamp and looked down at his arms. His flesh was eviscerated, hanging only by his wrist. His skin was melting off.. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you He is barely keeping his balance. Gustavo stumbled out of the nightclub.
He is barely keeping his balance.
I mean, even to get out of the nightclub, he had to put his hands up against the wall
to guide him out.
Usually, when you first open those doors and you walk out that fresh, crisp, night air,
just compared to the scent of liquor and smoke inside the club, it's refreshing.
But Gustavo didn't really feel that tonight.
He just felt dizzy, almost like he's hallucinating.
He would look up and the sky was dark, it's black,
but it's like a thick black color.
Like imagine the night sky,
but it's made out of cotton candy, it's dense.
You almost kind of want to grab it.
And then everything went black.
The next time Gustavo opened his eyes,
he's laying on the cold pavement next to somebody else
who is also peacefully sleeping.
He slowly gets up to not lose his balance
and he starts walking.
He's just kind of wandering around aimlessly.
Did he drive?
Why can't he remember if he drove?
Did it really even matter?
Gustavo thought, well, I mean, I could drive home, right? But all
I want to do is get home. It doesn't matter how. I just want to get home and take some painkillers,
like Advil, and then everything's going to feel better in the morning. He starts walking down
the street and he noticed that people are looking at him with very concerned, scared, cautious looks.
He's like, what? Do I have something on my face?
He's swiping his cheeks. There's some sort of gray pigment on his fingers
He looks back up and a man comes up to him and splashes water onto his arms like a cup of water
Just splashes him with it Gustavo instinctively pulls back. It's very strange. Everyone tonight is acting very strange
But Gustavo didn't really feel the cold water much.
It didn't bother him, so in order to not start a fight or a weird conversation, he just kept it moving.
He just kept walking towards the direction of his house.
Then another woman yells after him,
Hey! You need to call an ambulance!
No, no, ambulances are for the ones who need it.
You need it!
Something's wrong with your body!
No, don't worry, it's just my shirt.
I tore it up at the club and it's all shredded anyway.
Gustavo could feel his shirt.
It was shredded and hanging off of his body and every time he walks, he would feel it
swaying and hitting other parts of his torso.
The woman looked at him very concerned,
sir, you're not wearing a shirt.
Gustavo walked towards a street lamp
and he looked down at his arms.
The skin on his arms were hanging only by his wrist.
His skin was melting off.
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This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. We would also like to thank
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We worked with our wonderful Portuguese-speaking Brazil-based researchers for this case to provide
us with not only the primary sources
that were not available in English, but also to gather the data for this one, but also additionally
to provide context for all of the events. But as always, if anything at all has been lost in
translation, miscommunicated, or even if you have something that we didn't cover about this case,
please let us know down in the comments. So with that being said, let's get into it.
It was a little weird for Lilian to walk through the club
when the music isn't playing.
It was unnervingly silent.
Captain Lilian was in charge of the military brigade hospital,
so she's tasked with being one of the very first people
to go into the club after what happened.
The police officers are trailing in behind her
and almost out of reflex, they turn around to walk back out
because they don't wanna be in here even a second longer.
But they stop themselves, turn back around
and there's just tears streaming down their faces.
Lillian turns to them, don't cry.
If you cry, who's gonna do our jobs?
We have no right to be weak right now.
The worst has happened.
Our job is to return these boys and girls
to their parents as soon as possible.
This is not the time to cry.
Lilianne shines the flashlight around the dark club.
They all just stare out in silence
into the what's left of the dance floor.
Wait, what is that?
Did you guys hear that?
It's a phone ringing.
And then another, and another.
And it's like a sick symphony harmonizing with each other.
Dozens of phones were going off at the same time.
Lillian stared out at the bodies
that were piled five feet high on top of each other.
It was like a mountain made of human bodies.
Some were seemingly uninjured.
When you look at them from the outside,
there's not a single scratch on them.
But still, they were laying there dead.
Others had their skin melting off.
Like when you put plastic or rubber
into the oven by accident and you turn it on
and all of their phones are going off at the same time.
Every single call would go to voicemail.
That night at Kiss Nightclub,
an establishment frequented by college students,
632 people would be injured,
242 people would be killed,
and most of them would be between the ages of 18 and 21.
Mike looked at his seven friends in front of him.
These are like his best friends.
Okay, they're gonna understand, right?
Guys, I'm just not feeling it.
I don't really wanna go out tonight.
I might have to skip this one.
Like, don't be upset with me.
It's gonna be fine.
You guys will have a blast.
They're all staring at him and they're like, yeah, no.
We're gonna go.
Come on, it's Andrea's birthday.
She only turns 22 once.
You wanna come, don't you?
Yes, you do, you can't miss this one.
Mike looked at his left, then his right,
and his friends just look so eager and happy.
Like, how do you say no to that?
They didn't even have class tomorrow, it's the weekend.
So his friends, they're looking at him
with these puppy dog eyes.
Come on, Andrea's favorite band is going to be performing.
Okay, okay, fine, I'll go. All of his friends start cheering. Kiss Nightclub, even on a normal
weekend. I mean, it's got a reputation for being a very rowdy place. They said, if you want to go
watch a UFC fight, you go to Kiss. The establishment is notorious for drunken fist fights. Side
note, the club is also notorious and nicknamed kids by the locals because how easy
it is for a minor to get in.
The rumor has it, you could have a potato sack for your picture on your fake ID and
you would still likely get in.
But tonight, it just seemed a lot crazier than normal.
I mean, it was college night, meaning the club had made a deal with the local university,
federal university. So the university was going to host a party night. Invite all of the students,
not even just from their campus, but from all of the neighboring schools. Each person, each student,
trying to get in is going to have to pay a $3 cover fee. There would be two bands performing,
so it's kind of a great deal. And that cover fee, fee all of that would go to the university's graduation ceremony fund
So school was involved. Yes. Well like a student association of the school now the club benefits because once the students get in
I mean, they're gonna be buying drinks bottles reserving VIP tables
It's a very lucrative deal for them
So typically on a normal weekend the club has about a thousand people in attendance.
Tonight, there were rumors of 2,000 people, mainly college students squashed inside of that club,
like just squished like sardines. Mike couldn't even see the floor anymore. It was so crowded to
the point where even walking to one of the two restrooms in the club, it would have been an absolute journey.
So Andreale arrives with her closest friends and everybody's staring at her just jaws
on the ground because she usually likes to wear loose pants and sneakers.
This time she made an effort she's wearing a dress high heels and they pull Andreale
to the dance floor right in front of the stage and they're screaming along with all the songs, dancing with each other.
And Andrea's best friend pulls her in closer
and puts her face up to her ear.
I'm gonna use the restroom real quick.
She was not going to use the restroom.
She was squeezing her way through the crowd
to get to the back of the stage
and she gave one of the band members a note.
Please, please, please, can you guys play Baracho Iloco?
It means drunk and crazy. Please is my best friend's favorite song and it's her birthday today. Please,
please, please, please. The bandmates nodded and the lead vocalist turned on the mic.
This one's for Andrea, who's celebrating her birthday today. Now the high energy is
going to stay with the group. I mean, even when Andrea's favorite band goes off the stage
and is replaced by another group
that she doesn't even really know.
Andriel's so busy, like ear to ear smiling with her friends.
This was gonna be the best night ever.
And then the lights go out.
The entire club goes dark
and all you can hear are the screams.
Jess was laying in a hospital bed.
She knew that if she fell asleep, she would die.. She knew that so why are the doctors telling her to get
some rest? It was very tempting to just lay back, close your eyes for just a
moment, relax, she was so tired to unclench her jaw finally but she knew
that if she slept for too long the woman in red would appear again, calling her
name, reaching out her hand, drawing her in, and she knew
it was all the drugs, right? She's hallucinating. But still, she's scared to follow the woman
in the red. More and more patients were being brought in, and many of them with the same
injuries and symptoms as Jess. Many of them were stunned to just be alive. How did you
get out? How did you escape? I almost didn't. I saw someone screaming that they were leading
me to the
exit and when I turned around to follow them, my friend yanked my arm and said, no, that leads to
the restroom. It's a dead end. We got to go this way. She saved me. Who was the person screaming
at you, guiding you? I don't, I don't know. It was a woman in red. Survivors started popping up
everywhere claiming that they had seen a woman in red calling people into the restroom of the club
when the lights went out,
telling them that it was the exit.
But once they got there, they were trapped
and they would have just three minutes to get out
or else they would be dead.
More than a hundred bodies would be found in the bathroom.
And it's all because of a firework.
Did you know Disney is the second largest buyer
of explosives in the world?
Of explosives, yeah, only behind
the United States Department of Defense.
But if we're measuring by fireworks
and ignoring the other types of explosives,
Disney is the largest buyer of fireworks
in the entire world.
You say United States?
Government.
They buy a lot of fireworks?
Explosives, fireworks are considered explosives
Yeah, now Disney World does a firework show every single night and each show costs around
$40,000 now some of that goes to purchasing the fireworks, but a majority of that goes into hiring pyrotechnicians
so these are specialists that are professionally educated and certified to oversee the use of
pyrotechnics during any event. Pyrotechnics are any sort of firework, any sort of like fire show that
includes usage of gunpowder and gas to create these sparks. Every concert that you've been
to that has any sort of firework, they probably got a lot of pyrotechnicians there.
Yeah, I mean, to make sure that the fireworks do not work like an explosive weapon,
but rather a display of art, that takes a lot of time to learn.
Because fireworks are literally like bombs.
To set off most fireworks, the user lights a fuse.
The heat travels all the way to this compartment in the tube or the container that has gunpowder.
I mean, there's this very special type of gunpowder
that goes in there.
It's called black powder.
Now, once the heat reaches it,
it starts responding by creating a very, very hot gas,
but it's trapped.
The gunpowder's trapped.
On top of it is a shell.
It's like a round, it's just like a ball.
And inside the ball, there's a bunch of stuff,
but it's a ball sitting on top. And once the gas is hot enough, once It's like a round, it's just like a ball. And inside the ball, there's a bunch of stuff, but it's a ball sitting on top.
And once the gas is hot enough, once it's gassy enough,
the shell on top of the gunpowder is going to be launched,
catapulted into the sky.
And once it reaches a certain speed or altitude,
it's going to burst open and everything inside is going to technically explode.
Usually there's a ton of small pellets in there that contain like a whole variety of things.
Chemical compounds, different metal salts.
I mean, those result in colors and effects
like sparkling being made,
because you know how some fireworks they sparkle.
Some pellets even have chemicals inserted
that cause special noises, like potassium chloride
results in a large boom sound.
And then bismuth creates kind of a more crackling,
popping noise with some fireworks.
If you fill that tube with other compounds
that are not necessarily gonna be used
for the firework display, once it shoots up,
those can actually cause that a slowdown of the pellets.
So it creates that whistling noise
that you hear in a lot of fireworks.
They manufactured the sounds as well.
The alcohol, tobacco, and explosives divisions
in the government stated display fireworks.
These types of fireworks are subject to regulation
under federal explosive laws because they are explosives.
If you're not careful with fireworks,
you could lose a finger or a face or even die.
Doctors working the ER stated,
working the weekend of 4th of July in America
is kind of like a war zone.
There was a man that walked in
with his entire hand blown off
and almost a gaping hole
that you could see through in his stomach.
They stated that he was drunk
trying to position a firework away from him
and blow it off into the sky.
But after realizing that he lit the fuse,
he realized he was pointed at him instead of up at the sky.
So very last minute he tries to cover it.
He puts his hand to the tube and it blew off his entire hand and it went into a
stomach, the firework.
During the fourth of July,
another kid took a construction hard helmet,
taped a large firework to the top of it and then lit it on fire
because he thought he would just shoot off his helmet.
The bottom of the firework got so hot,
it melted through the helmet and then into his scalp
and then into his brain in the matter of seconds.
He did not even make it to the hospital.
People get injured so often with fireworks,
there's even a term for it.
For hand injuries, they call it pomegranate hand,
because it's gonna blow off all your fingers.
I feel like it's kind of offensive,
but that's just to show, I guess,
how frequent these injuries happen.
A member of Disney World's pyrotechnic team
would go on to say, anything can happen at any time.
It's explosives, it's fireworks.
Something is gonna happen, it's not if, it's when.
Now I wonder like how many accidents happen
in the history of Disney, that must be.
Yeah, I mean there was, I believe a firework company,
somewhere in Europe, if I'm not mistaken,
where a firework exploded,
and because they did not house the rest of their fireworks
well, all the fireworks that they had in their warehouse exploded at the same time.
It was really bad.
I think it had a bomb level reaction.
It was horrendous.
So now, the owner is asking,
what exactly do you need the fireworks for?
Marcello was the lead vocalist for the band that was going to be performing
at Kiss Night Club for University Night.
It's college kids. He feels like they need to have all the crazy antics set up.
So Marcello makes his way to the firework shop and the owner is asking him about how are you going to be using it? How many people?
I mean, is it going to be outside, inside? I'm trying to recommend the appropriate one.
I mean, I've used these before. I just need one of those big sparklers, like, you know, that just shoots out.
It's like a stick and thousands of sparks come out and you see those at the clubs, right?
Oh, at the club. Okay, well, if it's inside, you're going to need the indoor one. It has cold
sparks, so it's much harder for it to ignite something or someone. It's $15. $1515. Okay,
since you're performing at a fundraiser for university students, I'll give you a discount.
Let's make a 10 today.
Well how much is this one?
That one is cheaper, but it's not indoor safe.
Well how much is it?
It's 50 cents.
Well then I'll take this one.
$9.50 would cost 242 lives.
The order of songs an artist performs during their concert is incredibly meticulous and
it leans into human psychology.
I mean yeah, they want to sing the songs that they want to sing but they say concerts are
like a live animal.
You have to raise up the emotion, start with a well loved song that everybody knows the
lyrics to, then you gotta get in with another hit, keep, maintain that momentum, then you
bring it down slow. Slow it down get in with another hit. Keep, maintain that momentum. Then you bring
it down slow. Slow it down just for a little bit. If you slow it down for too long, people are just
gonna walk away feeling let down. Then you need to rise it up again, but this time higher than
the last and then let it down again. And then at the end, you need to have some of the biggest hits,
better hits, for the encore. Not even for the finale, because the memories of the last few
songs are the strongest for concert goers. It's more like a wave that finally
Christendos into a tsunami at the end. Now when Marcelo is looking out into the
crowd, everybody already has both their arms up. They're swaying in the air,
they're jumping up and down, screaming at the top of their lungs, and they're only
like a few songs in. What more is the band gonna do?
So the lead vocalist leans down and tells the band producer,
give me the firework that I prepped.
This was the band's go-to for an epic finale.
So the firework, it looks like I said, like a giant candle, like a giant tube that generates
like a trail of sparkles.
So not just a steady flame, but thousands of angry sparks
will just be flying out of it.
The vocalist and the producer, they light it up.
The singer has a glove on his hand
and he lights up the firework.
He lifts his arm up above his head, which is dangerous.
The stage was already raised to a level
where if you stood on the stage and you were above average
height, you lift your arms above your head,
you could almost touch the ceiling.
But Marcelo is lifting up a huge firework
that can shoot sparks up to 13 feet out of the top.
And he's raising it up towards the ceiling.
A big trail of sparkles are just shooting out of it
and one of the sparks meets the foam insulation
on the ceiling and a small blue fire starts.
Almost like when you turn on a gas stove, that color blue.
It looks like that on the ceiling and it's small.
The band producer tries to think quick
and he throws a water bottle up at the ceiling
to try and tame it, to put out the fire.
It only makes the fire angrier.
The blue fire turns into an enraged red flame
that's quickly spreading across the entire ceiling. Hurry,
get the fire extinguisher! One of the employees runs onto the stage with the extinguisher,
he aims it up to the ceiling, squeezes the handle, and shit. He looks back down at it,
he shakes it with both hands, and then he aims again and tries it again, nothing.
Allegedly, a few days ago, an employee had used the extinguisher at a friend's birthday party
at the club. He thought it would be fun and wild to just pop the an employee had used the extinguisher at a friend's birthday party at the club.
He thought it would be fun and wild to just pop the tamper seal off the extinguisher
and spray it onto the people on the dance floor.
Like a little party.
Like a party ex.
Vibe.
He was screaming at the crowd like, ah, and everybody's just getting sprayed with the
extinguisher foam and it's supposed to be for fun.
It's supposed to be like the most insane party in town.
And allegedly, they did not order another one, they just put it back into the same spot
and nobody thought that they would actually need it for the intended purpose, anytime
soon.
So water's not gonna put the fire out.
This is a fire that water is only going to make angrier.
The fire extinguisher isn't gonna put it out because they don't have any and the fire
is only getting bigger.
There are black fumes that are now
billowing from the ceiling, black clouds just rushing towards people on the dance floor. The
fire on the ceiling starts spreading out almost in a perfect circle. It almost looks like a portal
is opening up above everyone. Like a portal to hell. The black clouds would spread within 40
seconds to cover the entire club.
Even if you ran as fast as you could to the nearest exit,
you would look behind you
and you would see everything slowly getting covered
in black mist and fog.
It looked like it's chasing you.
Marcelo, the lead vocalist who lit the firework,
he's standing right in front of the mic.
He could have just leaned in and screamed,
get out, fire! But he didn't.
He U-turned and ran the other way.
He was one of the very first people
out of the club that night.
There were clubgoers in other rooms of that club
that did not even know there was a fire
until it was too late.
You mean they're trapped in there?
Yeah.
Because the ceiling was made out of polyurethane. Do you know what's in your mattress?
So back then it used to be springs, maybe some fabric and some fancy stitching, but these days
it's just foam. It's just layers and layers of foam stacked on top of each other. And for a very
long time, polyurethane foam was the more affordable memory foam mattress composition. That's what it
was mainly made out of. The overwhelming majority of that mattress
would be made out of polyurethane.
And polyurethane can kill you.
So you're sleeping on a fatal weapon every single night.
But don't freak out.
Polyurethane is in everything.
You can never escape it.
It's in mattresses, bedding, bath mats,
the foamy ones, do you know what I'm talking about?
It's in car seats, carpets, it's in your walls.
It's in your insulation.
You can polyfind polyurethane basically
in every single part of your house, and it's fine,
as long as you don't light it on fire.
When it's on fire, the gases that are released
will kill you in about three minutes.
Polyurethane releases, when it's on fire,
carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
Hydrogen cyanide is basically just cyanide,
but instead of the white powder form,
it's in gas or liquid form.
It's just as deadly, if not deadly, her.
Some experts argue it's one of the most dangerous forms
of cyanide out there.
Back when the U.S. did executions via the gas chamber,
hydrogen cyanide poisoning was the cause of death
for a lot of inmates.
That's what they used. So basically that's what the club is yeah now a gas chamber the first stages
start taking effect at the very first inhale it's a suffocatingly heavy feeling like someone
maybe a 150 pound man is sitting on your chest and you try to breathe and get a full breath in but at this point
It's not working
You can't lift your chest and you start hyperventilating because your chest feels so tight and then it slowly evolves the person sitting on your chest
Somehow transforms into a 9,000 pound elephant. That's what it feels like and now you really can't even move the veins and your neck
And your eyes they start bulging out. You feel like you're choking.
You start coughing, but it only makes your chest hurt more.
And your face is red.
Your jaw feels like it's completely clenched.
And suddenly you are completely out of oxygen.
Your vision starts to go fuzzy.
Your brain starts shutting down and you just want to go to sleep.
If you are lucky, that's what's going to happen.
You're going to go to sleep. Otherwise, the convulsions start,
the body starts to jerk uncontrollably,
every single muscle is stiff and tight,
and at this point your lungs are completely paralyzed.
Even if you wanna take a breath, you can't.
By the five minute mark, death is absolutely imminent.
A while back, before the university party,
Kiss Nightclub owners started getting complaints every day
for noise pollution.
Neighbors started saying that they could not sleep,
they could not function, because there would just be music
playing, blasting into their homes at 3 a.m.
on any given night.
So please, you gotta do something about it,
or I will call the police.
The club owners looked into special,
non-flammable acoustic foam
that can block out the loud noises of the band.
But the owners allegedly decided to purchase mattresses instead.
They allegedly had the employees rip them apart and glue them to the ceilings because foam is foam, right?
Like what's the difference between acoustic foam other than a huge price markup?
This was a DIY project you're saying?
Now some sources say that it was not
from a mattress that they purchased polyurethane foam by itself. Some sources say that they took
it from a mattress. Either way, you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to do that. You're
not supposed to glue polyurethane foam onto the ceiling. They just thought, I need to get rid of this noise leakage. The ceiling was made out of polyurethane.
Now, 40 seconds is about 23% of three minutes.
And when people get to the front door,
the exit, the guard is standing there.
Sorry, I can't let you out.
What do you mean you can't let us out?
Move out the way, we're gonna die in here.
They could hear the screams coming
from the other room of the club.
It's just another bar fight.
Get out more if you think this is the biggest danger
you're gonna face.
I need your full name first.
Why do you need my full name?
I need to get out, just open the doors,
we're gonna die in here.
Wait, they don't let them leave the club when they want to?
No, you can leave once we verify
that your tab has been paid.
If you don't pay, you don't get to leave.
And guess who ends up paying it if you don't?
Me.
It comes out of my paycheck, so bosses orders, give me your full name.
They stood there screaming.
A crowd had formed around the guard demanding to be let out, but he's not budging.
He has no idea there's a fire.
He thinks they're making it up.
Like fire in my ass, you're drunk and you need to pay your tab.
He stood there like a rock, keeping them trapped
for 40 seconds. People around them start slowly dropping to the ground, coughing,
hunched over, holding their throats, and then the black cloud started chasing towards the exit.
Then the lights went out. And boom, someone had kicked the door open.
40 crucial seconds were wasted by the guards
not wanting to let people out because they needed to make sure that they paid their taps.
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the fire would eventually get to the electrical wires of the structure and all of the lights would be shut off people could not see anything there were no emergency lights indicating an
escape route which is against all code and violate, that's such a violation of permitting.
You need to have emergency lights.
Because of the electrical wiring, the only light that was still on inside the entire club,
in this basically windowless, dark club, with the light inside the bathroom.
And that was not even intentional.
It's just, maybe it had a different circuit.
And all 2,000 people, they're trying to go there.
Because they think it's the exit.
The layout of the club was kind of like a maze.
So if you look down from above,
there's only one way in and one way out.
And the giant single level floor and separate rooms,
so they're not necessarily divided by doors.
But when you first walk in, there's this big rectangular room.
And on the left, there's bar stools. and then there's steps that lead to a wall. Now this wall has like arched
cutouts, doorways without the doors and that leads you into the stage room where
the there's another bar, there's a whole stage set up, people are dancing on the
floor, it's fun. Then you walk back out to where you just came in from. On your
left now you have a restroom.
It's one of the two restrooms.
You go past that and on the right,
you're gonna see a VIP area with another bar.
It's almost in its own little nook as well,
almost like another room.
Then you walk back out towards the exit,
but you don't keep going straight, you make a left.
That's where the restroom is, but it's a dead end.
It was confusing enough of a layout that first time clubgoers would go to purchase drinks at the bar and would get lost on their way back
to their friends. Or sometimes clubgoers would hear screaming coming from one side of the club.
They would just assume that it was another bar fight because they didn't really know.
And then the bathroom. To some people that bathroom light looked like an exit sign.
Others said it resembled street lights.
Like if someone had just opened the door
and you saw street lights coming in,
that was the exit right there.
That's what people are thinking.
So as long as you can get there, you could survive.
That's what everybody thought, just follow the light.
And they ended up in a dead end bathroom.
People were screaming at them in the dark,
turn back, this is not the exit, turn back, this isend bathroom. People were screaming at them in the dark, turn back! This is not the exit! Turn back! This is the bathroom!
Everyone would turn around and if the lights had turned,
they would see that there's no way to turn back around.
I mean, there are hundreds of more people pushing into the restroom
trying to get through. They're trying to push them out into
an exit that doesn't exist. More than a hundred people would be found dead in that tiny little restroom.
One man was found dead with his head dunked into the toilet because he had been trying
to escape the toxic fumes.
He had been trying to stay alive.
In other areas of the club, nobody could see anything.
They just heard screaming, coughing, crying, and because of the fumes and the heat from
the fire, people are starting to pass out on the floor. Wherever they were on their way to find an exit, they would just
drop. They would just pass out in the middle. They were getting disoriented from the fumes of the
melted toxic foam, and if someone tripped on an unconscious body on the ground, they would get
trampled over with very low chances of getting back up. They would be crushed to death. By this
point, the fiery portal that was burning
through the ceiling started to literally rain
chunks of flaming hot foam.
If a piece so much as touched one of the attendees' skin,
it would have felt similar to the sensation
of accidentally touching the hot racks of an oven
as you're pulling out a frozen pizza.
Except you can't pull your arm away.
It's just there.
You have to hold on to the burning rack.
Once the steering 400 degree Fahrenheit foam touches the skin,
it would have clung on like saran wrap.
If they tried to swipe it off with their hands,
the foam would just scorch their hands.
It would blister through every layer of skin
and their skin would just come off
as they were removing the foam like saran wrap.
Likely it would have disintegrated
the underlying muscle and tissue as well.
Even the people that were able to reach the exit door,
I mean, they couldn't get out.
There were metal barriers set up right outside the club door
to prevent people from running out without paying their tap.
It's like a pool railing.
So when everyone is pushing up against you,
you can't get over it.
You don't have enough space to move your leg up and over the railing because everyone is slamming
into you from behind. You don't have enough space to crouch down underneath it because your stomach
is getting squashed. You can't slide down, down to underneath the metal bar. So even though the
exit door is right in front of their faces, they could just reach out and touch it with their hands,
they could not escape.
Is this inside or outside?
This is still inside.
They have barriers inside the, right in front of the door.
Right in front of the door.
They couldn't escape.
Passerby's on the street had seen the commotion.
They saw the thick black smoke mushrooming from the club.
It could be seen from like a mile away at this point.
Passerby's ran up to the exit door, yanked it open
and started just pulling people out.
Clubgoers would be passed out from lack of oxygen,
being crushed up against the railing or the fumes,
and a stranger would just grab them by the underarms
and lift them out.
Others had to be grabbed by their clothes
because passersby saw that they had third degree burns
on their arms.
And this is something that comes up,
but a lot of people would try to grab someone by their arm
and the skin would just fall off.
So they would have to find different ways to grab them
to get out of the club.
That night, hundreds of calls were made to 911.
Please, I'm seeing here from my building
a thick horrible smoke coming your kiss night club.
Screens are coming out,rible, horrible scene, please.
Hello, 911.
Everything is burned here.
Hello, fire department.
Kiss Night Club is on fire.
The Kiss Night Club is on fire.
Help.
Many parents and family of the attendees
had made it to the club in the middle of the night.
They had gotten out of bed.
They had heard word that Kiss Night Club was on fire
and they remember their loved ones
were gonna be in attendance.
They rushed to put on whatever clothes that they had and traveled as quickly as possible
to the nightclub. There was a traffic jam outside the club for miles.
Some parents just completely abandoned their cars and started running on foot to the club
to find their babies. They would have one phone to their ear non-stop calling their kids, non-stop
calling 911 while running up to every gray suit covered person. So they're all covered in gray dirt.
Just trying to get the dirt off their face to see, is that my baby? Is that my baby?
One parent called 911, please just tell me what happened. Please just tell me my daughter was in
there. She was at the party on that street. What's going on? Another parent just screams into the phone.
Where's Fernando?
Where's Fernando?
Where's Fernando?
In another call, the 911 operator tries to comfort
one of the dads that called looking for their son.
They're okay, they're okay.
No, everyone inside is dead, man.
Yes, inside, but not your son.
I don't believe you.
Nobody was very clear on what's going on.
What everybody knew was there's a huge large-scale fire at the Kiss Night Club.
There were deceased victims splayed out on the street outside of the club.
There were periodically new victims rushing out of the club, but inside it was completely
pitch black.
Most victims were covered head to toe in gray suit, making them look like zombies. What took people a minute to realize was just how many people
were still trapped inside the club. There were already so many people lined up outside,
so many bodies lined up on the street, and people were trying to cover their bodies with
plastic bags. Things got difficult though when parents had to go body to body and lift
up the plastic sheet and check to see if any of the bodies belong to their child.
And if they found their child laying there, I mean, what did they do? They
would just fall down and weep over their bodies. It just felt like nobody was
coming to help. Meanwhile at the local hospital, Dr. D's colleagues, they're a little superstitious all of them.
They all kind of believe in bad omens when it comes to work.
Dr. D does not entertain any of those.
The whole, if any health care worker in the emergency department utters the words,
it's been a quiet day, huh?
Then everything goes to shit and it's going to be pure chaos.
He doesn't really subscribe to those beliefs. But it has been awfully calm. It did oddly feel like
they were waiting for a storm. There had been no serious emergency in the past seven days
that even required an ambulance to be dispatched in the whole city. That was not normal. Or
at least for their hospital, it wasn't normal. Even Dr. D didn't have a good feeling about this.
The day after his shift around midnight,
he was driving home with the music on.
He passed by Kiss nightclub, saw a line of young students
waiting to get in.
College days are a different time, you know?
Like he has wife and parents that he's got to take care of
in a different town, so no nightclubs for him.
He goes home, he crashes onto the bed,
and the phone starts ringing.
He shoots up, grabs it from the nightstand.
Patricia, his wife is up and staring at him eyes wide
because it's 3.30 in the morning.
You only get one type of call at 3.30 in the morning.
The bad ones.
It was Dr. D's colleague, Dr. Pedro.
Why is he calling at this hour?
Hello?
Whoa, wait, slow down.
What's going on?
Dr. D pulls his phone away from his ear
because Dr. Pedro is screaming on the other line,
loud enough for even Dr. D's wife to hear.
Fire, fire, please come to the Kiss Nightclub
right now, dead students everywhere.
Patricia saw her husband turn into another man.
His eyes are focused, he jumps out of bed
in a fluid wave of motions.
He grabs his change of clothes,
his medical bag goes to the kitchen, opens the fridge,
grabs three coquettes and shoves them into his pocket.
Because he knows in these moments,
he doesn't know when his next meal is gonna be
and he needs to stay sharp.
Patricia prepared a cab for him
and by the time that he made it to the club,
only five minutes had passed.
Sir, taxi driver, are you sure there's no faster way to get to the club?
They look in front of him and there are just rows
and rows of stand by traffic.
There's, they're all at a standstill.
No cars are moving.
Dr. D reaches into his pocket, gets a wad of bills out,
throws them at the taxi driver and starts running
on foot to the club.
He felt like he was a doctor in a war zone.
That's what he said.
People were walking around the street like zombies,
all gray from the fumes and coughing.
Firefighters had arrived,
they're hosing down parts of the building
and taking axes to the side of the building
to try and open up a bigger exit way.
Civilians are dragging unconscious friends onto the street
and performing CPR.
Bodies are lined up on the side neatly in a row,
they're unmoving, they're dead.
Some people were just dazed, they're dead. Some people were just days,
they kept walking around everyone, lost, confused because the fumes had disoriented them so
much. They didn't even realize that they had 40% burns on their bodies. Ambulances are
trying to rush in and out of the soon carrying stacks of bodies to the nearby hospitals.
Dr. D spots Dr. Pedron in ambulance, drenched in sweat, performing CPR,
without even saying a word, he gets to work.
Side by side, they would search each victim
brought out for signs of life.
When they had none, they would have volunteers
move their bodies out of the ambulance.
No signs of life, we need to move on.
We need to keep moving.
But civilians would refuse.
What do you mean no signs of life?
She's still warm, her cheeks are red.
She looks like she's sleeping, she's not bleeding, she doesn't have any burns or injuries. She's alive. You have to save her. You're not doing your job
She's clearly alive
Many of the young people weren't burnt a good amount of them were and they had really severe burns that would require them to stay
in the burn unit for a very long time, but a
Lot of the victims had died from smoke inhalation
for a very long time, but a lot of the victims had died from smoke inhalation.
So other than the gray dust covering them
and sticking to their hair,
they all just looked like they were taking a nap.
So a lot of their friends and family,
they could not trust the doctor.
You have to keep trying, I'm telling you, she's alive.
Like she doesn't even have a cut on her body.
In the moment, Dr. D was too focused
on getting to the next victim
that it didn't really set in, but later he must have felt very odd, like an odd sense
of guilt. He didn't want them to be dead either. He didn't want to give up on them
either, but they were gone. What more could he do? He said there would be moments where
he would break focus for two seconds, he would look up at the sheer chaos and just the pure desperation in everyone
and he would just have a full blown panic attack setting it
and he would have to talk himself out of it.
No, you cannot lose control right now.
People are depending on you for a chance at survival.
Wait, what are they doing over there?
Dr. D sees a group of young men taking off their shirts,
grabbing a water bottle
and drenching the shirts in water, covering their faces with it and running inside to
rescue people. He didn't know if these were complete strangers. He didn't know if these
were people who had been inside the club that escaped that still had friends inside or if
they were family members that showed up at the scene after the fire broke out, or maybe they were volunteer fighters.
He didn't know.
All he knew is all of them would be found dead by the end of the night.
The people that ran inside?
They would die trying to save more lives.
We need more ambulances to transport victims to the hospitals.
They need to get to an emergency facility now.
Most of the hospitals nearby had sent every single ambulance they had. They were overwhelmed with victims. Dr. D looks around and there's no more ambulances left and a taxi driver raises his hand
and another hand shoots up and it's a civilian. It's a passerby that another taxi driver.
They would all help transport the injured to local hospitals.
16 year old Julio had called his mom at four in the morning
and she woke up frantic.
What's wrong?
Why are you calling me?
Did something happen?
No, it's just Augusto, their older brother,
his older brother.
Augusto said he was gonna pick me up at 2.30
so we could go home, but he never showed up
and I've just been kind of waiting
for the past one and a half hours.
I heard there's something going on at Kiss Night Club,
and last night I talked to Augusto,
he said he was gonna go there.
I don't know what's going on.
Their mom hung up and woke up their dad in a hurry.
They both threw on whatever clothes they had.
They grabbed a set of keys to their family Honda,
their car, but they realized it was gone.
Augusto had taken it that night.
Shoot, they don't have a car.
So they rushed to their neighbors.
I'm so sorry to bother you at this hour,
but please trust us, we would not ask
unless it was absolutely necessary.
Our son took our family car
and something's happening at the nightclub.
I don't know if you heard, you could ask anybody,
something's happening.
Could you please just take us there?
They jump into the neighbor's car
and they start making their way there.
Augusto's dad was a mess.
He was really close with his son.
He never had a close relationship with his own dad.
And Augusto's dad has always been kind of a very stoic man.
He was a military man since he was young.
And Augusto's very first word was life-changing to him.
It was like a gut punch.
Because instead of mom or dad, his first word was selva, which according to our Brazilian researcher means jungle.
And it's kind of a greeting term that you say to a military man.
And Augusto's dad did not want that kind of relationship with his son.
So he changed his whole life.
He changed his way of parenting, of communicating, and ever since then they were like best friends.
This was his best friend.
When the neighbor's car pulls up closer to kiss nightclub, Augusto's parents start to panic.
Any hope that they had was rapidly exiting their bodies.
It was utter chaos.
They run out of the car and they sprint to the club and stop, stop, stop.
They stopped dead in their tracks because in front of them is a long line of dead bodies.
They hold on to each other because otherwise they would have fainted.
They try to look for Augusto's face in the line, but nothing.
They try to peer into the club.
There's nothing.
It's pitch black.
Nobody's telling them what's going on.
The best shot that they had was Augusto's dad pulls out the spare key for the family
Honda.
We got to go to the parking lot and search for his car. If we find it, we know that he's still in here
and he might be in there, in the club.
They start going row by row, clicking the buttons
to see if any car beeps and if any of the lights glow up.
Please don't be here.
Please don't, maybe he went out with friends somewhere else
and forgot about his brother and his phone died
and he's just having fun.
They push the unlock button for the family Honda and they both freeze.
They click it again and a few cars down they hear beep beep.
It's the family's black Honda.
Augusto would die that night.
In front of the club everyone is just talking over each other.
I mean people are screaming.
I looked behind me and I saw a young man
and his skin was melting off.
I took off my heels because I didn't want to step on people.
They were like, Pile, a few feet high.
I just stepped on them to get out.
Please, please just let me go back in.
Let me go back in.
I have to save my girlfriend.
She's still in there.
Giovanni was standing outside the club,
frantically scanning every face that ran out the door.
He had been one of the first to escape,
but his brother and their two friends were still in there.
Giovanni was holding onto his ribs,
coughing and scanning the faces.
His brother, I mean,
there's no way he's gonna go home without his brother.
Giovanni wet his t-shirt, tied it around his face.
Now, side note, Giovanni had been in an accident 10 years ago
where he lost 40% of one of his lungs.
But he forced himself to take the biggest breath
that he could and he ran back inside and the plan was
to go find where his brother was to retrace their steps
and he would get his brother out.
But once he got in, he saw people crawling.
How is he gonna ignore them to go find his brother?
Like he can't just push past these people to go find his brother. That's not what his brother would have wanted.
So he just starts pulling people out.
The first person he grabbed, he grabbed their arms to pull them, but they slipped and their
burned skin was in Giovanni's hands.
Giovanni had to think quick.
He started grabbing men by their belts and women by their shirts and he formed a bit
of an assembly line with other volunteers.
They were just passing bodies until they were reaching the outside.
His eyes were stinging, his lungs felt like a thousand needles were inside just embedding
themselves.
It would be another person and he'd tell himself, one more, if I can just get one more person
out, just one more and he would keep pushing himself.
Most of the bodies he saved were semi-conscious and covered, had to tell in gray suits. They were unrecognizable, especially in the dark. We don't know exactly how many people Giovanni was able to
save, but he had originally done all of this in an attempt to save his brother, whom he believed
was still in the back of the club. Giovanni would be hospitalized and he would be defeated until his parents got a call. Giovanni's brother was alive. He had been handed off
by Giovanni to an ambulance and he did not even know that was his brother because he
was covered head to toe in dirt. Dr. Ewerton was a trauma surgeon
at the local emergency department.
He had just received a call that hundreds,
if not closer to a thousand university students
had been injured by a fire
and they were gonna be transported
to all of the emergency departments nearby.
Dr. Ewerton gathered his entire team, got them prepped.
Everything we've done and learned up until this point
was for a reason.
We cannot fail these kids.
Everybody needs to be ready.
We are at war.
Custodial staff.
We're gonna need all hands on deck.
Grab the oxygen tanks.
We need to keep them circulating,
distribute them to whoever comes in and needs them,
and prepare the rooms.
Every spare room that we have in this hospital
that is not occupied by an existing patient
transform it into a makeshift ICU unit.
And if we run out of rooms, put beds in the hallways.
They called neighboring hospitals to request immediate delivery and loan of their respirators.
Doctors and nurses from neighboring towns were also making their way over.
It was an all hands on deck, all Hail Mary situation.
Santa Maria is known for being a university city, a college town.
So there are seven private
universities and a major public university.
It amounts to about 40,000 students in that city.
And there's only seven hospitals.
Emergency departments in five of them, ICU units in six of them, and all the freestanding
smaller emergency units around the city were going to be quickly overwhelmed with the victims
from the fire.
Loved ones of attendees were already gathered outside the hospitals. It was getting nearly
impossible to get near Kiss Nightclub with the traffic jam, so they thought, let's just wait at
the hospitals. That way if we see our loved ones being escorted in, we can be by their side.
Many of the hospitals needed to start manually ventilating the patients with oxygen masks
and air pumps. That means instead of a machine, because they ran out,
there would have to be staff manually pumping a bag
and if they stop, a patient dies.
Dr. Ewerton's nearly 300 beds fill up so fast
they need more help, more supplies, more beds.
Dr. Ewerton didn't wanna alarm anyone,
but it was very obvious that it's not just a regular fire
because at this point they have no idea
it's hydrogen cyanide.
All the patients coming in from kiss
needed to be intubated,
intubated meaning inserting a tube
into someone's throat for ventilation.
They needed to be intubated fast.
Even if patients walk into the hospital seemingly fine,
they'd be like, no, no, no, I was in the fire, I'm fine,
I'm just a little bit dizzy, but I am breathing now,
the coughing has stopped.
But if they weren't intubated,
Dr. Ewerton would turn around and they would code.
All of them needed to be intubated.
Dr. Ewerton was so laser focused,
going from one patient to another.
I mean, the hospital is a wreck,
their patients piling on each other,
almost every few seconds you would hear someone screaming,
code blue, code blue!
Doctors would just be running down the hallway.
Some patients look normal,
not a single scratch on their skin when they coded.
Other patients had very deep,
extreme burns all over their skin.
There were screams of pain, coughing.
People were coughing so hard they were throwing up blood.
Skin was shredded and melting off
like candle wax from victims.
Blisters, there were red, white, and blue,
and just black patches of human flesh
that didn't even look human mixed with blood.
And then the hospital door slammed open,
and they're laying on a hospital bed
with Dr. Ewerton's son.
His wife was by their son's side,
and their son was coughing.
He was blue around the mouth
and having difficulty breathing.
All Dr. Ewerton wanted to do was freeze.
That is his son.
But then he remembered the words of a famous surgeon.
In an emergency situation,
if you think too much, a patient dies.
We have to intubate him.
Dr. Ewerton's son grabbed his hand.
Dad, please no, I don't wanna be intubated.
I feel okay.
I have to or you will die.
He intubated his son immediately and rushed him to the ICU
Meanwhile dr. D called the Air Force
This is an emergency. We need to take desperate measures or the patients will die. I need your help
Okay, what do you need? We need to airlift patients to neighboring towns. Okay, how many patients do you need to airlift three four?
At least 50 to neighboring towns. Okay, how many patients do you need to airlift? Three? Four?
At least 50.
But there was a problem with the survivors. Most of them were being brought in unconscious
or they were being intubated,
meaning they cannot communicate with the hospital staff.
Most of the guys being brought in
had their IDs in their pockets,
but many of the women that were brought in,
they typically kept it in their wallets, in their purses,
and those were left behind at the scene.
They could not be airlifted unless they could be ID'd.
A volunteer dentist was going from room to room,
just writing down characteristics
of everybody without an ID,
weight, height, tattoos, scars, skin marks,
and then periodically a list of names and characteristics
would be read outside the hospital.
But that also resulted in a lot of pain because families would think, oh, that sounds like
my daughter.
And they would run into the room that their daughter was supposedly in, and it's not their
daughter.
And if their names were not called out, or their descriptions were not called out, most
likely they had passed. At 5.45 a.m. January 27,
2013, firefighters announced that there was no possibility of life inside the club anymore.
If they went in, it would be purely to recover bodies, not to rescue. Dr. D was asked to
put on a mask and go inside and verify their belief. He went in to check for any vital
signs of life. All he had was his mask, flashlight,
and a light med bag just in case.
First few bodies he stumbled upon
were actually the first body that he stumbled upon.
He quickly searched for a pulse, nothing.
Then he shined the light at the victim's face,
and it was familiar.
It was an ex-colleague, someone that he used to work with.
But he couldn't afford to get emotional now. He had to go deeper into the club,
check for more signs of life.
It was a doctor as well?
I believe they were like a med staff.
He had to walk away from his ex-colleague's body.
He said, when I got inside, I saw bodies everywhere.
It was a heavy scene, very sad, very shocking.
And in some places,
bodies were piled up more than five feet tall.
He saw the bodies in their last moments, attempting to survive. It was a heavy scene, very sad, very shocking, and in some places, bodies were piled up more than five feet tall.
He saw the bodies in their last moments, attempting to survive.
He said he saw one man with his head
submerged in the toilet,
another one with his body facing the open freezer.
They were all dead.
He walked out of the club, took off his mask,
and he announced no possibility of life inside the club.
Rafael looked at his dad.
Are you sure you're gonna be okay?
Yes, yes, go have fun.
Rafael was hesitant.
His dad had suffered a stroke a few weeks back
and Rafael was the only one taking care of him
and he was about to go out of town to hang out with friends.
I can just call Natalia and cancel the whole trip.
No, it's your birthday, Rafael, go have fun. Rafael had plans to meet Natalia and cancel the whole trip. No, it's your birthday, Raphael. Go have fun.
Raphael had plans to meet Natalia in Santa Maria to stay with Natalia and another friend
and go to the Kiss Night Club that night.
But he just kept second guessing himself.
He grabbed his suitcase, headed out the door, but before he did, he went to his dad's bathroom
and wrote, I love you, on the mirror.
He walked out.
Now, that weekend, Raphael, Natalia,
and another friend of theirs would be at Kiss Nightclub
when the fire broke out.
Natalia and Felipe both lived in Santa Maria,
so their families were there to help them
and look for them.
But Raphael's parents, they didn't live there.
They lived in a few towns over.
Natalia's dad remembers getting that phone call.
His daughter had been found.
She was in a hospital.
She was in a coma, but she was in a hospital, she was in a coma,
but she was in a hospital, she was gonna get operated on,
and they also found Raphael.
He was at the local gymnasium.
Natalia's dad sat there with his hands on his steering wheel
for a split second.
I mean, he could easily go to his daughter Natalia.
She'd be in a coma, but at least he could be near her,
near the hospital, just in case she wakes up,
in case the doctor needs something.
He could be there for his daughter.
But who would be there for Raphael?
His parents were getting on the first flight to Santa Maria,
but I mean, he was completely alone right now.
So Natalia's dad entered the address for the gymnasium
and went to find Raphael.
He knew that's what Raphael's parents would have wanted,
what Natalia would have wanted.
So he went to the gym and sat with Rafael
until his parents came.
From the moment he walked into that gym, he did not leave,
not even for a second, until Rafael's family could take over.
Even when he got a call that Natalia's situation,
his own daughter's situation and condition
was getting worse, he did not leave.
He sat there next to Raphael's dead body,
staring out at the sea of victims
laying on the gymnasium floor.
Over 200 of them lined up in rows,
waiting for their families.
There were hundreds of young college students just there.
And every three minutes, you would hear a scream
and it would be one of those ear piercing screams
that sounds like it's echoing off the walls and making every bone in your body
vibrate. It is guttural, it is primal, it is the deepest, purest form of pain. And
it would happen every three minutes like clockwork. The scream of a parent who
had found who they had been looking for. Their child.
Order up for Damien!
Hey, how did your doctor's appointment go by the way?
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Adore, is that you? The door to Grandma Oliveira's house clicked open.
Adore, Adore honey, is that you?
Aitor was her grandson that was living with her
and he was supposed to be back last night
but he didn't make it home.
She remembered distinctly,
he was busy working on his laptop.
He's only 24 but he had this new business he set up.
It's like an open bar business.
So he and a bunch of bartenders would host big events
or at clubs when there's big parties.
It was doing really well.
He always had his head buried in some papers
and it's not as fun of a job as someone might think.
It's less parties, more paperwork,
and sales pitches late at night.
Ator grabbed his keys and jumped up.
Where are you going?
Huh? Where are you going?
I'm gonna kiss nightclub to give them a price sheet
for an upcoming event,
but I'm gonna be back soon, grandma.
Like right back, I'm not just giving them a price sheet.
He ran out the door and before closing it,
he poked his head in and said,
be back in no time, grandma.
He walked out.
He didn't come home last night
and his grandma had been worried sick about him.
So when the door clicked open the next morning,
she said, is that you, honey?
She rushed to the front door
and instead of her grandson, it was her daughter.
Atewa's mom, Livia.
No mom, it's me.
Her eyes were bloodshot and his grandma just knew.
She felt like an 18-wheeler truck had just slammed straight into her chest.
Livia's bosses, so this is Aitor's mom.
Livia's bosses, they kept calling her to check up on her
to see if there's anything that she needs.
It had only been a few hours since she found out
that Aetor had passed.
She found out pretty quickly from the fire.
And things were still developing.
The bosses, you know, had a son Livia's age,
so they couldn't even imagine what Livia was going through.
She must be absolutely destroyed.
Livia told them she wouldn't be coming to work for a while,
but politely declined all their other offers for help.
She hadn't seen them or thought about them since, you know, they're her bosses.
But after she buried Aetor, she was walking around like a numb robot.
Her body was responding physically, she felt pressure on her chest, her eyes were never
dry, constantly wet with tears, her face was dry from the tears just getting dry on her
cheeks, but she was just wandering around. And then she saw a pair of feet in front of her. She
looked up and there was her boss. And his eyes were swollen. And she knew that look.
It was the look of a parent who had just lost everything. After they checked in on Livia
about a tour, Livia's bosses got the word that their son
was also at that nightclub and he also passed.
And the two made eye contact and without saying a single word,
they stepped forward and they just let go
in each other's arms, sobbing.
There is a saying, an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of a cure.
And this entire incident could have been prevented.
Experts state that there are almost 20 factors that could have prevented the fire from taking
over 200 lives.
The pyrotechnics were not indoor safe, the firework, and Marcelo is the one who brought
and lit the firework, the lead vocalist for the band.
What's crazy is that, I mean obviously him purchasing an outdoor firework to be used
indoor is a huge point of anger, but another thing that really confused in angered netizens
and the public was the fact that he had a microphone right in front of his face, he
could have taken two seconds to just scream out fire, get out!
But he didn't.
He didn't give everyone a heads up and the authorities have no idea how many lives have
been killed because of that one non-action.
He would argue that his bandmates and himself were so busy turning off the electrical equipment for
their gear when the fire started because the last thing they wanted was some
sort of electrical fire or explosion to add to the mix and because they were so
hyper-fixated on saving lives. Marcello did not have time or the capacity to
scream into the mic that there was a fire. Most people do not believe him. They
think this was a way for him and the others to get out of the club faster
and easier without a crowd search.
He's at the far, deep corner of the club,
but he was one of the first out.
On top of that, some of the bandmates
even had some of their instruments on them.
I guess they didn't want to lose it in the fire.
So he lights the firework, he escapes.
No alarm or announcement was made
by anyone else in the club either.
The firework ignites the soundproofing foam
on the ceiling of the club, but it's not.
It's just polyurethane.
There's also fabric curtains on the stage that don't help.
It just spreads the fire faster.
They try putting it out with water, that doesn't help.
The fire extinguisher is empty
because all they used it for was for parties.
The club was dangerously over capacity
because you know how every commercial business
you walk into a restaurant bar,
they have like maximum capacity signs.
There's a few ways officials calculate maximum capacity
for a commercial space.
Usually it all just comes down to fire code.
How quickly can people get out of a space
in case of an emergency?
They factor in a few little details.
The amount of exit doors.
They do not go through the kitchen or storage room.
They have to be pure exit doors.
How wide are the exit doors?
That's a whole thing, okay?
So based on the business and building,
the club was supposed to have doors
that were 14 and a half feet wide,
but the doors were only 8.39 feet wide.
Anyway, it also factors in amount of doors,
width of doors, and the amount of square footage
of the place.
Additionally, how many obstacles there will be
at any given point inside to the closest exit door.
So rule of thumb, restaurants will have way lower
occupancy numbers than an open ballroom
that doesn't have a lot of chairs and tables
crowding the space.
And even if you have a large venue,
if you don't have enough exit doors,
you're gonna have a lower occupancy rate. The maximum capacity of KISS was 700 people.
Experts speculate there was anywhere between 1500 to 2000 people there that night,
in a 6,700 square foot area. There were no emergency exits. The regulations state that
there has to be at least two emergency exits on opposite sides of the building. There were none.
Everyone had to leave through one door, the same door that they came in through.
But once they got to that door, there were illegally installed metal barriers trapping them in,
making it that much harder to evacuate. Beyond the metal barrier, security guards were stationed
at the doors and since the communication amongst the employees was non-existent,
which is a huge no-no for a venue like this. Everybody needs to be on the same page.
The security guards were initially preventing people
from getting out because they didn't know there was a fire.
The lights had gone out.
There were no adequate emergency exit signs,
no sprinklers, no smoke control equipment.
The original architectural plan for the building
had a lot more windows and a smoke-exhaustor ventilation
system, but those were later taken out to cut down on cost.
Another combination of other incompetencies took place that factored into it. smoke-exhaustor ventilation system, but those were later taken out to cut down on cost.
Another combination of other incompetencies took place that factored into it.
There were unauthorized renovations done, inefficient inspections from authorities,
the club's fire prevention permit expired in August of 2012, fraudulent signatures
were placed on official documentation to approve renovations that were not up to code, and
those are just the things wrong with the club.
Other contributing factors were like
authorities did not isolate the area around the club
once the fire started,
leading to chaos that led to less efficient
medical transportation for the victims,
not even protective gear for firefighters
to go into the building.
Civilians were going back into the building
to save loved ones leading to their deaths.
I mean, all of these things delayed evacuation by a a lot and it just meant the difference between life and
death for a lot of people.
And guilt is a funny thing because there's no universal threshold for when someone should
feel it.
Some people could do the most heinous things and not feel an ounce of guilt.
And some people could do nothing and guilt will eat away at their lives. The parents of the victims all put the burden of guilt, and some people could do nothing, and guilt will eat away at their lives.
The parents of the victims all put the burden of guilt on themselves.
Maybe if they had asked their kids to stay home that night, or asked them to come over
early the next morning, maybe they wouldn't have been there.
One mother blamed herself for buying her daughter heels.
Her daughter, Theneese, had plans to attend that party, and she was trying on nice shoes
and dresses.
I don't think these are my style.
She was staring at the heels she had tried on.
She was always more of a sneakers and flats kind of girl.
But her mom was like, you gotta live a little.
All you do is study.
Here, I'll buy you the heels and you can wear them.
Denise went to kiss that night wearing a new dress
and the heels that her mom bought her.
At the club, she stepped outside for a moment
to call her mom.
Well, how is it?
How's the party?
Are you having a good time?
Yeah, I'm having a blast, but these heels are killing me.
They're hurting my feet.
And the two would laugh about it.
But once the knees passed,
her mom would always feel guilty about buying her those shoes.
She said, I think about it a lot.
How difficult it must have been for her to try and escape
a place like that with those heels on.
I shouldn't have ever bothered those.
The Bayreau family had two daughters
and they had both gone to kiss that night.
Patricia, their eldest daughter, Patricia's husband,
Gracie, their youngest daughter and her boyfriend.
The four of them had gone to the club
when the fire broke out.
The next morning they got the call.
They were in the car rushing as fast as they could
to try and find their daughters.
And on the way there, Mr. Byro turned to his wife and said,
My love, my hope is that the girls are safe and they're just asleep at home.
But if the worst has happened, we have no choice but to join them, yes?
The parents went to the nightclub and nothing, all seven hospitals, nothing.
They went to the gym and there were the two deceased bodies of their daughters, but also their two partners
were found dead as well. The rescuers in charge of recovering the victims bodies
from the club and transporting them to the gym, one of them said, I still feel
it in my arms. I still feel the difference in the weights of the
bodies that I carried. There were heavier ones and there were lighter ones and at
first we were all being so careful with the bodies but just never stopped
coming. There was just another one and then another one and it was just body
after body and I just wanted to get away from there and I couldn't stand the
tragedy anymore so we just started rushing. Even at the gym there's a photo
of the president there and along with other politicians
They had gone to the gym before any of the parents or family members were allowed in and it's alleged that not all but some of them
Were being very disrespectful
Not to the bodies but they were treating this as a photo op as a press tour of look just look at how sad I look while I look at this
Tragedy that has taken place in our country
The volunteers were completely outraged.
There's even a picture, again not insinuating that the president did a photo shoot there
or what her intentions were, but there is a photo where the president is holding whom
we can assume is a victim's mother, and I guess it's supposed to look comforting.
Like she's one with the people.
But one of the moms is just staring the camera down in the back, allegedly, likely because she wasn't allowed
into the gym until the politicians were done.
Now they're like making it a whole thing
of trying to look good.
I mean, it's the presumption of that photo.
Eventually the parents entered the gym
where they would find hundreds of bodies
neatly laid down on the floor.
And it was a lot.
I mean, a lot of lives were lost
and a lot of lives were intertw. And it was a lot. I mean, a lot of lives were lost and a lot of lives were intertwined
because it's a venue.
People went with their friends and their families.
So in the process of trying to find their child,
a lot of families would find two, three
of their children's best friends.
Or some parents, they would see their son-in-law
or their daughter's boyfriends
laying on the other side of the gym,
opposite the significant others. It was a lot. And because of on the other side of the gym opposite the significant others,
it was it was a lot. And because of that, a lot of the parents decided to have a funeral right there, a collective funeral for all the friends and family to be buried together. Over a hundred
coffins were lined up in the gym and there's a very well-known photo from one of the funerals.
It's of a woman named Yasmin crying on top of her boyfriend's coffin. It was Yasmin's birthday.
And she just remembered she wanted to look really good for Lucas.
So she had picked out this white dress and gold strappy heel.
She painted her nails red.
When the fire broke out, Lucas had gone to the restroom and Yasmin was near the front door.
So when yanked her out of the club and she was fighting them,
kicking, screaming,
I have to go back,
Lucas is in there, I have to go back.
But it was too late. Lucas was gone.
And the picture of her crying over the casket
would be seen all over the world.
And side note, a magazine published this picture
on their front page and there was a huge controversy
because people thought it was staged.
They thought the magazine had hired a model
and got a casket prop to take this shot.
Because she's-
Why would they say that?
She's wearing like this fedora
and the angle of the photo.
It looks very almost cinematic in a way.
And I think people wanted it to be staged.
Because I think once you realize it's a very real photo,
it just, it feels a lot heavier to look at that photo.
Outside of the club, there were some really bad people
also involved in this case.
The cost of coffins, caskets, and flowers skyrocketed
to the point where it was speculated
that after the tragedy, people went around buying up
all the coffins and caskets so that they could turn around
and sell it for four times the price
to the grieving parents.
It was really gross.
Other people resorted to victim blaming.
One pastor at a victim's funeral literally went up
on stage and said, let this death be an example
for all of you.
Children who disobey your parents.
If Augusto were at church, he would not be dead right now.
Some netizens even told the parents it's their fault
for raising children that would go to night clubs, that would go clubbing.
There were other netizens that I don't know if they were necessarily trying to be disrespectful, but there were a lot of theories going around that were connecting this incident to other
mass, mass, mass tragedies in history that I don't even feel comfortable touching upon because it's just not a connection
I think should have been made.
Other netizens were just speculating if anybody foreshadowed this.
So there were some party goers who had tweeted things like, let's set Kiss on fire tonight
because you know they're just saying like let's have fun.
The kiss owner had said he wants to take the club international.
People thought he was foreshadowing it.
There was a netizen rumor going around
that we have no idea if this is true,
that one of the last songs played was Die Young by Kesha.
Cause the lyrics go, I hear your heartbeat
to the beat of the drums.
What a shame you came here with someone.
So while you're here in my arms,
let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young.
Take my hand, I'll show you the wild side,
like it's the last night of our lives. We'll keep dancing until we die."
But I thought it was the band that was playing.
Yeah, so they were doing cover songs and interchanging and stuff. Just to clarify again,
though, we don't know if the song was played. Now, in the end, four people would be tried
for what happened that night at Kiss. The two owners of the club, Kiko Spore and Mauro Hoffman, the band lead vocalist would also be tried, the one that
ignited the firework, Marcello, and the band producer that also helped light the firework,
Luciano, he would be tried. All four were indicted for murder and all four of them came
locked and loaded with just excuse after excuse. They were blaming everybody. The club owners are
blaming the authorities like, well, you didn't do your inspections correctly enough then.
Because that's your job.
That's not my job to go to the law.
That's why you're an inspector.
Marcello was blaming the firework company.
He was like, well, I just asked him for the firework
but he didn't give me the original box it came in.
If I had read the box and said, don't light it inside
then I probably wouldn't have lit it inside.
The owners also resorted to blaming Marcelo.
And they're like, well, we don't use pyrotechnics
at our club, like we don't do any of that.
But that was a lie because there's lots of pictures
and videos of pyrotechnics being used at the club.
I mean, like most clubs use it.
They put the giant sparklers in the champagne tubes
and they bring them to the VIP tables.
He's like, no, we never do that, but they did.
They did use them. Maybe not to that, we never do that. But they did. They did use them.
Maybe not to that scale that Marcelo did, but they did.
Side note, Kiko, the owner of the club, is a character. He did interviews during all
of this where he blamed the architect, safety inspectors, basically everyone but himself.
He even blamed the whole country and said, it was a succession of heirs made by the whole
country. Yeah, he also spent a good amount of time in the interview crying about how
he had trouble sleeping in jail
And how he had to spend his birthday in jail and that was rough for him
He also tried to lie and said the lights never turned off in the club
Even though there's so much evidence to argue otherwise. He's like, you know, the lights were always on so they could have escaped if they really wanted to
Are they not the most hated people? Yeah, Brazil like yeah
It was rough. It was rough.
It was rough.
The police, the ambulances, the firefighters,
they were all under fire, more so the firefighters,
but I would say the other groups,
they got a lot of heat because
they didn't have a disaster plan in that city.
It was just chaos.
They didn't rope off the perimeter.
They didn't do anything.
The ambulances were so disorganized
They wasted so much time. They also started transporting dead bodies to hospitals and I think in any other situation
That's such a human thing to do and we can see why they did it because they don't want to believe these people are dead
But the doctors told them they're dead and there are victims that needed help
It got to a point where there is a man,
this picture is pretty famous in association with this case.
There's a picture of a man running around
with a limp body in his arms.
He was just looking for any vehicle
to send this man to the hospital.
There were none.
But he did not let this man out of his arms
until he was certain that he was going to get to a hospital.
But even then it was too late.
By the time he got there he had died and the victim's sister Bruna had called Ezekiel, who's the bodybuilder,
and she cried and said,
Thank you for trying. Thank you for trying to save my brother.
Furthermore, there was a lot of discourse about the firefighters at the scene during the rescue efforts.
The firefighters went in depth about their rescue efforts, how it was so tough, they were understaffed,
how they had not enough oxygen tanks to go in
and each oxygen tank only had 10 minutes of oxygen in there.
So once they went into the club, they couldn't even see.
They said the flashlights would be shining
and they can't see like an arms length away from their face
because the smoke is so thick.
They said they were just trying so hard.
They would stay in there even after their oxygen ran out to risk it to save these people
to be there for everyone because that's what firefighters do.
They're hosing it down, they're axing down the walls.
They were desperate doing whatever they could.
These statements would later become a huge controversy because the surviving victims,
one of them Giovanni, remember he saved his brother.
Yeah, he said no.
None of the firefighters were actually going inside to rescue brother. Yeah, he said no, none of the firefighters
were actually going inside to rescue people. They were all just standing near the door, maybe they
were inside the club, but like right next to the door, grabbing bodies from the civilians who were
inside saving people without any gear. Giovanni said they would just stand at the door and a
civilian would run out from inside the club holding someone and they would take that person from the
civilian rescuer and let them run back inside the club.
Giovanni stated that he even asked for oxygen tanks
from the firefighters so that they could run back in
and stay in there longer and they refused to give a time.
And again, we don't know which side is true,
but I just don't know why a survivor would have any incentive
to lie about something like this.
And on top of that, the firefighters would,
even though they refued all these claims,
they would later be tried in military court.
But they, usually military court for situations like this is a slap on the wrist.
But in the end, all four, the two owners, the lead vocalist and the band producer,
they all got around 18 to 20 two years in prison.
That's it?
Oh, you're about to be so upset. But it was immediately overturned.
Allegedly the judge kept having lunches with the jury.
I don't know why, okay?
No one knows why.
The judge would state that they just do that.
They just have lunch with the jurors.
But they don't talk about the case.
They said that there were guards present
and they were certain they never talked about the case.
But the defense attorneys were like,
that's tampering with the drury, so absolutely not.
It was overturned and since then,
there has never been another trial.
They're just free.
What?
Nothing happened to them.
Yeah, it's speculated that maybe the club owners
had ties to the government or something
because there's just no way this makes sense.
It was one of the biggest cases in Brazil.
Like all of Brazil was hurting. I just don't see why. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
And there were just a lot of these odd coincidences. The main prosecutor, there's just a lot of
odd connections. The main prosecutor, this is way before the fire, had been tasked with
investigating the club for noise pollution and permitting, like violating permits. He
ends up retiring in the middle of these investigations.
His son ends up becoming the lawyer that represents the club during the permitting investigations.
So the son switched side from investigating to defending?
Or the prosecutor could, again speculation, be friendly with the club
and had plans to not really do anything about the breaking of the violations. And then now that he's retired, the son knows the insider details allegedly if the
dad just tells him this is what the prosecutors know and can rep them in a way that's more beneficial
is, I don't know, a speculation. But there's just a lot of odd coincidences. Oh yeah. Okay,
side note, the parents are also going gonna get sued for defamation by the prosecutors
because the parents were coming out saying, I think that this is like bribery and corruption,
there's just no way.
Yeah.
They were getting sued by the prosecutors.
So the public, they called this the second tragedy of kiss because it is.
In response to the public, the prosecutors stated that they would stop suing the parents,
but the parents said, no, keep suing us.
Prove to us that we're liars then.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Then the judge stepped in and tried to close the case
by quote, forgiving the parents of the victims
without even doing a proper investigation.
The parents didn't want that either.
What was there to forgive them for?
They wanted a full investigation into the truth
because they know that they're not lying.
So everyone else can try to prove it.
That didn't go anywhere though
because the justice system is confusing
and not great anywhere.
This is not just Brazil by the way, just anywhere.
Because before anyone even judges Brazil,
we had a situation in Rhode Island
in the United States very similar
where a club was lit on fire from pyrotechnics.
Lot of lights were lost.
Now with that, there were massive protests
all over Brazil with signs that read,
Where Were You on January 27, 2013.
And people tried to hold protests, marches, but in the end, nothing really came of it.
There is still no justice.
The land that the club has been sitting on and the club itself has been given to the parents of the victims,
they are going to put up a memorial there to remind everyone that drives past like,
this is what happens. We cannot let this happen again.
It does seem some changes are being made.
There are some regulations that are being enforced to make Santa Maria safer.
Stricter standards are being enforced for commercial businesses with large fines if protocol is broken.
But it's just been, yeah, I don't really have the words.
Recently abandoned Dubai was under fire
because they were performing on stage.
They lit up a firework and they shouted,
hello kiss nightclub.
No.
Yeah, they apologized on Instagram and they moved on.
But for a lot of parents and families, They apologized on Instagram and they moved on.
But for a lot of parents and families,
they can't move on because it feels like time has stopped January 27th of 2013.
And that is the story of the Kiss Nightclub fire.
What are your thoughts?
Let me know.
Please stay safe and I will see you guys on Wednesday
for the next episode.
Bye.