On this day…..42
years ago, fire broke out in the 25-storey Joelma Building in the centre of Sao
Paulo in Brazil. The blaze happened just a few weeks after the disaster movie, The Towering Inferno, was released, and
it became known as ‘the real Towering Inferno’.
The fire was started by an
electrical fault on the 11th floor, and spread rapidly thanks to the
ready availability of combustible materials such as paper, plastics and wooden
walls and furniture, and within a few minutes, flames were leaping right up to
the roof.
When the blaze began, there were
more than 750 people inside, but the building had no emergency exits, fire
alarms or sprinkler systems. More than 170 fled to the roof, but the
heat and smoke foiled a helicopter rescue, and about 40 were killed jumping
down or trying to get to firemen’s ladders out of reach below them.
Others died of suffocation attempting
to escape via the building’s escalators, and altogether up to 189 people were
killed. After the disaster, Brazil’s fire regulations were tightened up.
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