(Reuters) — A candle-lit memorial is set up outside a Bucharest nightclub on Saturday (October 31) and Romania’s government declared a three-day national mourning, after an overnight fire killed 27 people and injured 184 during a rock concert that featured fireworks used indoors.
In one of the capital’s worst disasters in decades, up to 500 people, mostly young adults, stampeded for the only available exit as the club in the basement of a Communist-era sport-shoe factory filled with smoke.
Officials and witnesses said fireworks were used inside the club, while Colectiv Club’s Facebook page advertised pyrotechnic effects at the show.
Deputy Interior Minister Raed Arafat said 17 of the 27 dead had yet to be identified and 146 people remained in hospital. He said no fire permit was requested by the club nor granted to them by the Bucharest firefighting department.
President Klaus Iohannis toured Bucharest hospitals to visit the victims and also lit a candle at the club, while some 600 people queued to donate blood.
A pillar covered with foam panels and the club’s ceiling went up in flames, followed by an explosion and heavy smoke, the witnesses said. Many people admitted to 12 hospitals had suffered burn, smoke inhalation injuries or were trampled.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta, just back from an official visit to Mexico, ordered checks on clubs across the country to see whether safety and firefighting norms are being observed.
Magda, a local resident said she had come to show support for those who had lost someone in the accident.
“I came here in sign of solidarity with the victims and their parents. I have two children myself. I would like all of us to do something, for those young people,” she said.
Another local resident expressed his gratitude for having stated home on Friday night.
“If I had been here last night, probably instead of me lighting a candle for those who died, somebody else would have been lighting a candle for me. It’s just like it was God’s light shining over me and I stayed at home; I didn’t go out, I didn’t come here,” said Vali.
Deputy Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea said a criminal investigation into the causes of the incident was already under way at the General Prosecutor’s office on suspicion of murder and destruction crimes, but no accusations were yet pressed.
Any open fire displays and fireworks in Romania require special authorisation if used in a public indoor place. Such permits may be granted if the venue is assessed to be safe and equipped with extinguishers, and the fire department deploys several firefighters to the place.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker sent a message of condolences: “I am greatly saddened to see so many young lives ending so tragically. My thoughts are with the grieving families and friends as well as with all those working hard in rescuing and in assisting the victims.”
Some of the deadliest nightclub disasters in the world have been caused by fireworks.
In the southern Brazilian college town of Santa Maria in 2013, a musician lit an outdoor flare inside the Kiss nightclub and started a fire that killed at least 241 people.
Fireworks were also blamed for nightclub fires in Russia’s Perm that killed 156 people in 2009 and in Argentina’s Buenos Aires in 2004 that killed 194.