RIO DE JANEIRO, FEB 13 (AFP/APP/DNA):A fire broke out Wednesday at a factory making costumes for Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival, injuring 21 people in a blow to the famed extravaganza that attracts millions of tourists to the Brazilian city every year.
Workers at the Maximus factory were working around the clock to finish the outfits for samba schools before Carnival parades start in around two weeks — an often tense time for competitors who spend almost a whole year preparing for the event.
The fire department told AFP that 21 people were hospitalized after the blaze. According to Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, ten of them were in serious condition.
Earlier, state health secretary Claudia Mello said at least eight people had been intubated and were on artificial respiration.
Fire department chief Colonel Luciano Pacheco Sarmento said that those affected were working in a “precarious manner” and the building contained “a lot of highly combustible material.”
Some workers had been sleeping in the factory, survivors said.
They “were not obliged to sleep” there but “many lived far away” and did so to “avoid wasting time and money going back and forth,” Jose Ricardo Braz Santos, a 42-year-old cleaner at the factory, told AFP.
“I can still hear the voices of people screaming in my head,” he added.
A survivor, identified as Roberta, told local media she had been working and sleeping in the building “since Monday.”
The fire “came from the floor below and we had no way to get down,” she said.
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