FIRE crews were too frightened to enter the inferno – but young clubber

Vinicius Rosado was not.

The 26-year-old student plunged into the flames of the Brazilian nightspot

again and again and again.

And each time the 6ft 5in “gentle giant” came back out cradling at least one —

and sometimes two — people in his arms.

He saved at least 14 lives.

Then he went back into the raging fireball one more time, and did not come

out.

Vinicius, known as Vinny, had been one of the first to escape Santa Maria’s

Kiss nightclub when fire broke out in the early hours last Sunday.

But according to witnesses, as soon as he saw that his sister Jessica was safe

on the street outside he turned around and went straight back in — to help

strangers.

His grieving dad Ogier, 51, said: “They said one time he emerged carrying two

people under his arms.

“Even the fire crews didn’t dare go in there, but my son did.

“It was the kind of person he was. He was a giant in every way, but even I

don’t know where he found the strength to do that.

“Vinny never thought twice if somebody needed help. When I arrived there that

night and couldn’t find him outside the club I knew he was either already

dead or inside trying to rescue others.”

The physical education student, who lived with his family three streets from

the club, has become known to residents of the small town as “the Hero of

Santa Maria”.

Onlookers report that he never even paused to breathe in fresh air each time

he emerged from the burning hell.

He would just hand over the limp body he was carrying to firemen, then dive

straight back in.

Vinny was later brought out unconscious from the club. He died on the way to

hospital.

He was one of 236 young people who perished in the flames and toxic smoke of

the party spot. The blaze is believed to have started when a band let off

fireworks inside which instantly set fire to the foam roof.

Ogier continued: “I keep asking myself, ‘Why did he do it? Why didn’t he save

himself?’

“He was going to graduate this year, he was planning to move to Sao Paulo and

he had his whole life ahead of him.

“But he made a choice to save others, even if that meant losing his own life.

And thanks to him at least 14 families aren’t mourning for their children.

“My son didn’t die for nothing — he died to leave us all a message, about what

matters most in the world.”

Vinny’s incredible tale is just one of hundreds to come out of the horror

of the nightclub blaze. And each story you hear is more heartbreaking than

the next.

Like the pair of young lovers whose bodies were found locked in a tight

embrace.

The mobile phone picked up by a fireman which had 104 missed calls from a

female victim’s desperate mother.

The mother who lost all four of her children. The taxi driver who helped lay

bodies on the street — then found his own daughter.

The young man who hid in one of the nightclub’s freezers to try to escape the

smoke, then sent a text message to his mother saying he knew he was not

going to get out alive, and saying goodbye.

The woman who stayed with her wheelchair-bound boyfriend because she knew he

would not be able to get out, hugging him as they died together.

Firefighters later reported that they were nearly unable to prise the two

bodies apart.

Some parents have not been able to bear the pain.

Two have already committed suicide and two others have died after suffering

heart attacks, according to locals. The latest suicide was on Thursday, when

a mother who lost both her daughters hanged herself with her shower hose.

Grief is palpable in the small university town in Brazil’s far south. People

cry openly on the street.

At night young men and women can be seen riding motorbikes or driving their

cars around the streets, in floods of tears.

In front of the club’s burned-out shell in the town centre, flowers fill the

road and cards cry for justice.

Nobody here calls the fire an accident. It was a crime, locals say.

The club’s licence had expired. There was only one narrow exit. The ceiling’s

sound-proofing foam was made from a cheap, highly toxic material.

The fire extinguishers didn’t work and the band had deliberately bought

fireworks designed for outdoor use because the indoor ones were more

expensive.

Traumatised survivors have other chilling claims about what went on inside,

too.

Eduardo de Oliveira, 22, who was at the club with five friends, said: “The

bouncers at first put a turned over table in front of the door to stop

people leaving.

“They thought we were trying to leave without paying, so everybody began to

get crushed.

“I found myself unable to move, pressed against the wall. I couldn’t breathe.

I thought I was about to die.

“I don’t know how I managed to find the strength to free myself – maybe the

adrenalin kicked in.

“I know someone smaller than me, or a girl, would have died right there. I had

to climb over a mountain of bodies to get out.

“After I got out hardly anyone else came out alive. I helped carry the bodies

to the other side of the street.

“I’ll never be able to get those faces out of my head.” Four people have been

arrested in connection with the disaster so far, including the club’s

co-owner.

Two more who died were Mirella and Jose de Cruz.

Mirella, 21, was the local beauty queen and Jose, 18, was “her brother and

best friend”, according to their aunt Tatiane, 36.

She speaks about them because their mother Helena cannot. Dumb with grief,

she rocks on a chair.

What makes the family’s tragedy even more desperately heart-breaking is that

both brother and sister managed to ESCAPE the inferno. But when each

looked around outside and could not see the other, they both went back into

the flames to search, and perished.

Tatiane said: “They were so close. There was no way one would have come home

without the other.

“They both lived their lives intensely and did everything together.”

At first their mother thought that only zoology student Jose had died, and

believed Mirella, who was training to be a teacher, was being treated in a

local hospital.

But as she walked through a makeshift morgue to identify her dead son, she saw

her daughter’s body too.

Tatiane said: “She recognised the clothes she’d been wearing.

“She came out screaming, ‘My two little children, my two little children’.

That was the last thing she said about them.”

Bereaved dad Arizoli Lemos is handling things differently. He cannot stop

talking about beloved daughter Flavia, who turned 22 two days before she

died. He is a taxi driver, and is back at his regular rank just a block away

from the Kiss club in the centre of Santa Maria.

The 60-year-old said: “If I stayed at home I wouldn’t cope — I’d end up doing

something stupid.

“Here there are people I can talk to about it, offload some of the pain.

People stop and ask me how I’m doing, it helps.

“It’s those times when I’m sitting in my car on my own when the desperation

comes, and I cry and ask God, ‘Why me?’”