Brazil detains band, club owners after club fire

SAFETY ENFORCEMENT UNEVEN

Relatives and friends of the dead demanded accountability,signaling the start of a wave of police probes, lawsuits andrecriminations that could drag on for months or even years.

Based on testimony from more than 20 witnesses,investigators are now certain that the band's pyrotechnics showtriggered the blaze, police official Sandro Meinerz said.

The band's guitarist, Rodrigo Lemos Martins, 32, said he doubted the band was responsible for the blaze. "There were lotsof wires (in the ceiling), maybe it was a short circuit," he was quoted as saying in Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

The band's accordion player, Danilo Jaques, 30, was among those killed, but the other five members survived. The band'svocalist and production engineer were detained by police investigating who was responsible for firing the flare,according to Brazilian media.

It seems certain others will share the blame for Brazil's second-deadliest fire ever. The use of a flare inside the club was a clear breach of safety regulations, fire officials said.

Some details may never be known. Meinerz said the club ownertold authorities that the club's internal video surveillancesystem had stopped working three months ago.

Clubs and restaurants in Brazil are generally subject to a web of overlapping safety regulations, but enforcement is uneven and owners sometimes pay bribes to continue operating.

The investigation of the Kiss fire could drag on for years. After a similar fire at an Argentine nightclub in 2004 killed 194 people, more than six years passed before a court found members of a band criminally responsible for starting the blazeand causing the deaths.

That tragedy also provoked a massive backlash against politicians and led to the removal of the mayor of Buenos Aires.

Civil lawsuits stemming from the Brazil fire are likely tobe directed at the government because the owners of the nightclub probably don't have much money, said Claudio Castellode Campos, a Brazilian lawyer who has handled big cases including the crash of a TAM Airlines jet in Sao Paulo in 2007.

Castello de Campos disputed some statements by local officials that the Kiss nightclub could have continued operating legally while it was waiting for its license to be renewed. "If the license was expired, that's an irregular situation," he said.

Valdeci Oliveira, a legislator in Rio Grande do Sul state,said he and his colleagues would seek to ban pyrotechnics displays in closed spaces such as nightclubs.

"It won't bring anybody back but we're going to introducethe bill," Oliveira said on his Twitter feed.

The Brazil fire is the worst to hit an entertainment venue since 2000.