SANTA MARIA, BRAZIL—Brazilians waking up Sunday to news of the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade were torn between grief and bafflement at how it could have happened.

The fire, apparently started by a rock band’s pyrotechnic effects, raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil hours earlier, filling it within seconds with a thick, toxic smoke that killed at least 233 panicked partygoers who gasped for breath and fought in a stampede to escape.

Television images showed black smoke billowing out of the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people, as shirtless young men attending a party joined firefighters with axes and sledgehammers to free those trapped inside.

But little could be done; officials later said most of those who died had been suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours the floor of a community gym was lined up with body after body, partially covered with black plastic as stricken family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones looked crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

“It is a scene of horror,” Elizabeth Shimomura, a police investigator at the nightclub, told television reporters.

Indignation among some survivors on Sunday already pointed to a heated discussion over who was responsible for the tragedy.

Survivors said security guards briefly tried to block people from fleeing the club. (Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.)

“Only after a multitude (of partygoers) pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” said Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, in comments posted on Facebook.

Teenagers sprinted out, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends in their arms. Many victims were under 20 years old.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city’s fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because “there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance.”

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when band members lit flares.

“The band that was onstage began to use flares, and suddenly they stopped the show and pointed them upward,” she said. “At that point the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread.”

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that his band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. “and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning … A guard passed us a fire extinguisher. The singer tried to use it but it wasn’t working”

Survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29, told GloboNews that “those who were closest to the stage, where the band was playing, had the most difficulty getting out.”

Officials at a news conference said the cause was still under investigation — though police inspector Sandro Meinerz told the Agencia Estado news agency the band was to blame for its pyrotechnics show and that manslaughter charges could be filed.

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Martin, the guitarist, said band members are already getting hostile messages. “People on the social networks are saying we have to pay for what happened. I’m afraid there could be retaliation.”

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. He said earlier that the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Most of the dead apparently were asphyxiated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a medical professor at the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city’s Caridade Hospital to help victims.

“Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 per cent of the victims died of asphyxiation,” Beltrame said by telephone.

“The toxic smoke made people lose their sense of direction so they were unable to find their way to the exit. At least 50 bodies were found inside a bathroom. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the exit door.”

Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period.

The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.

Sunday’s fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

With files from Star wire services

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