Digital Extra: The Station Fire

Protesters blame public corruption for the nightclub fire that killed 190.

01:13 AM EST on Sunday, January 9, 2005

BY MARK ARSENAULT
Journal Staff Writer

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Hands pound together, slowly at first, and then faster, until the rhythm is too fast to keep up, and the young Argentine men and women break into shouts toward a shuttered nightclub protected by the police.

It was not fireworks that killed their friends, they say; it was the corruption.

They circle and hold hands for a quick prayer aloud in Spanish, and then the sudden demonstration of maybe two dozen people was over, a mild display of the rage that has provoked thousands of people into the streets in four major demonstrations since fire struck the Cromagnon Republic dance club in Buenos Aires on Dec. 30.

Fireworks apparently launched by a fan during a rock concert ignited flammable acoustical material on the dance hall's ceiling. The fire spewed a hot black cloud and cyanide gas over the crowd, says a doctor assigned to the city's ambulance service. The estimates of the number of people in the club at the time range from 3,000 to 6,000; it had a legal capacity of about 1,100, according to local papers.

People choked in the cloud; others were trampled in the rush to escape.

The death toll from the Cromagnon fire stood yesterday at 190, including 15 people who died in hospitals in the nine days after the blaze. Some 700 people were reported injured, and several dozen are still in critical condition.

From the overcrowding and the flammable soundproofing inside the club, to the makeshift memorial spreading outside, the disaster is eerily similar to the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, which killed 100.

AP photo / Eduardo Di Bai

A week after the nightclub fire, relatives and friends of the dead have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires.

Small bands of young people yesterday had staked claims to the asphalt outside the Cromagnon, which is inside a converted parking garage attached to the Hotel Central Park complex. About 10 young men had set up a dome tent on the sidewalk, promising an around-the-clock vigil to guard the chaotic and growing shrine of pictures, candles and flowers outside the club. An additional 50 or so people stood quietly before the haphazard memorial.

GUSTAVO ROA, a 27-year-old keeping watch at the shrine yesterday, said he arrived a little late to the Dec. 30 concert at Cromagnon by the local rock band Los Callejeros, a name that means "street people."

"We walked into the place and right then it started," he said in an interview conducted through a translator.

"There were some people with burn wounds, some who were stepped on and trampled. We tried to help take these people out.

"There were kids who made it out to the sidewalks and died there from the poisoning. The material gave off this venomous smoke. A lot of kids died -- young kids."

Emergency doors had apparently been wired shut. The club's owner has been arrested.

JANUARY is the heart of summer in the Southern Hemisphere; the midday temperature yesterday was 85. Hard rain Friday had broken an oppressive heat wave of 100-degree days, but left the air sticky and humid.

At the site, the police have used crude metal grates to block both ends of Mitre Street, fronting the hotel complex and dance club. About 12 officers, in black uniforms and unpolished silver badges, stood guard inside the barricade late yesterday morning.

One end of the police blockade is near a heavily used public park and a bus depot, in which hundreds of pedestrians are constantly gathering. Many walk over to view the fire scene. The intersection has become the site for most of the public demonstrations, and for the symbols of grief -- pictures of those who died, charred shoes from some of the victims, and a print of a mourning Jesus Christ.

But cutting through the grief is anger, much of it focused at Buenos Aires Mayor Anibal Ibarra. Thousands of people in this city of 3.5 million have protested to demand Ibarra's resignation over the safety violations in the Cromagnon Republic.

Graffiti slapped onto walls in dripping red letters demands: "Justicia."

Justice.

THE AREA around the nightclub was at one time a heavily Jewish, middle-class neighborhood. Many Jewish families have moved out, replaced by immigrants who are generally from Korea, Bolivia and Peru.

The area has been in decline for several years. Sidewalks are cracked, torn up and pocked by calf-deep holes.

Most of the buildings are three to five stories, and nearly all are concrete. There's no consistency of building architecture or condition; an art-deco gem can sit wedged between two featureless concrete boxes crumbling into decay.

Cab drivers zoom without conscience down the side streets -- red lights seem to be worthy of just a brief slowdown, before they are ignored. Sidewalks are busy with pedestrians. Ground-level shops sell fruit, shoes, coffee and haircuts.

The Cromagnon club abuts one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Buenos Aires city proper. Near the club, plastic wrappers, bottles and other trash collect in doorways and along the curb. A homeless woman under a railroad bridge sits on a sofa cushion on the ground, and folds clothes.

The public park near the club is jammed with people, busy even for a Saturday. Many homeless people congregate in the park, and local preachers often practice their ministry there.

Whispered conversations at the shrine are drowned out by the constant roar of buses, gathering passengers at the park. The air reeks of diesel fumes.

Banners scrawled in Spanish urge people to "never forget."

Signs label public officials as "rats," "corrupt idiots" and "assassins."

Someone has painted a call on the street for "a political trial on genocide charges for [Mayor] Ibarra," who, before the fire, was considered a likely candidate for Argentina's vice presidency.

And fashioned to a fence was the striped blue-white-blue flag of Argentina, on which somebody had written, "There will be revenge for all."