DEADLY NIGHTMARE: Michelle Cardoso posted a desperate call for help on Facebook before dying in a raging blaze that killed more than 230 at this Brazilian club. (EPA)
Michelle Cardoso
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A co-ed fatally trapped in the Brazilian nightclub inferno pleaded for help the only way she could — on Facebook.
“Fire at KISS help” was the message Michele Cardoso, 20, sent from the doomed Kiss club early Sunday.
Cardoso, a medical student, had a part-time job in the college-town club’s cloak rooms.
She used her phone to post her message at 3:20 a.m., 50 minutes after the fire is believed to have started.
Frightened friends left messages for hours seeking word on her fate.
But Michelle, her boyfriend Joao Paulo and sister Clarissa were among the 231 confirmed victims of the world’s worst club fire since 100 perished in a 2003 Rhode Island inferno.
The toll could climb dramatically. National Health Minister Alexandre Padilha said 75 of those injured were in critical condition and could die.
Funerals began yesterday as police in the town of Santa Maria detained the club’s four owners.
Michele Cardoso’s father, Sandro, went on Facebook yesterday to warn one of the owners, Elissandro “Kiko” Spohr, to get out of town.
“KIKO you killed my two daughters,” he wrote. “I think it would be good if you moved from Santa Maria.”
Investigators said the tragedy was inevitable once a band’s pyrotechnics began the fire.
There was no fire alarm — or sprinklers or fire escapes, they said. A band member tried to put out the fire shortly after it began, but the extinguisher didn’t work.
The newspaper Zero Hora also said police seized two members of the band, called Gurizada Fandangueira.
The band’s guitarist, Rodrigo Lemos Martins, 32, told Brazilian media he saw flames lick the ceiling after the group’s spark machine was deployed. He said there were about 1,200 to 1,300 people inside the club at the time.
“I felt that something was falling from the roof and I looked up and I saw the fire was spreading, and I shouted, ‘Look, it’s catching on fire, man, it’s catching fire!’ ” Martins said.
“Then the drummer tried to throw water on it, and it looked like the fire spread more then. Then the security guards came with an extinguisher, tried to use it, but it didn’t work.”
But he said he denied the accounts of 20 eyewitnesses that the band was responsible for the blaze.
“There were lots of wires [in the ceiling], maybe it was a short circuit,” Folha de S.Paulo newspaper quoted him as saying.
Brazilian media also reported that most of the victims died of smoke inhalation when they fled to the rest rooms, thinking they had emergency exits.
Witnesses said security guards who didn’t know about the blaze initially blocked people from leaving without paying their bills.
Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they’re allowed to leave.