Exit Signs and the 2004 República Cromagnon Fire
UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 2004 República Cromagnon Fire
Argentines awoke on New Year’s Eve to scenes of horror on television: Pictures flashed of dazed, sobbing survivors from a nightclub fire, blackened by soot, outside the club or in hospitals. Others were frantically searching for loved ones, and fainting, wailing parents guarded charred bodies lined up outside on the club’s sidewalk.
4,000 fans at a New Year’s Eve concert by the band Los Callejeros, nearly three times the building’s capacity of 1500 people, fought to reach the exits after a flare ignited the foam ceiling, sparking a blaze that killed 175 people and injured another 714.
Four of the six emergency exits were found padlocked or wired shut to prevent people from entering the club without paying. Instead, the barred exits prevented the young adults from leaving the building as burning debris fell on them.
Before the concert, the rock band playing at the club warned the crowd not to shoot flares because of the fire hazard. People attending rock concerts in Argentina frequently set off flares and fireworks. But during the first song, a flare was fired, turning the club into a blazing inferno.
The fire tore through the concert hall in the working-class neighborhood of Once, filling the club with thick, choking, black smoke. Several small children and babies, found in a makeshift nursery in the women’s bathroom upstairs, were also killed in the fire.
One of the club’s barman said that a flare fired a week earlier in the same club caused a small fire that was quickly extinguished. It later became known that República Cromagnon was overdue for a fire hazard inspection since late November 2004.
It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.
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Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful and unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.
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