SANTA MARIA, Brazil — The band was revving up, and Luciene Louzeiro was right where she wanted to be at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, in front of the stage. As hundreds of people around her in the crowded nightclub began to dance, she saw something shoot from the stage toward the ceiling: a flare.
“No one cared because they always do that, to make us dance a little harder,” said Ms. Louzeiro, 32, a saleswoman at a clothing store who went to the nightclub, Kiss, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. But when she looked up, she saw that the ceiling was on fire.
“I started screaming, and thought, ‘When it’s your time to go, it is God who decides,’ ” she said.
The tragedy that unfolded next — a stampede away from a raging fire, a panicked struggle to open exit doors blocked by security guards and the deaths of more than 230 people, many of them university students, from asphyxiation and burns — has stunned a nation where the current attitude has typically been one of confidence and satisfaction after nearly a decade of robust economic activity.
The description of the mayhem from survivors and statements by band members themselves, two of whom were taken into police custody on Monday in connection with the fire, revealed a frantic struggle for survival that lasted no more than a few minutes.
Eliel de Lima, 31, the drummer in the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, told reporters that after he felt sparks fall from the ceiling, a percussionist nearby tried throwing water toward the ceiling. When that did not work, a security guard aimed an extinguisher at the blaze. The extinguisher failed to function, too, he said.
After that, panic set in on the stage and in the crowd. “Black smoke spread quickly, then I couldn’t see a thing,” Mr. de Lima said. Still, he ran toward the exit, an effort made “500 times more difficult” by the throng of people going in the same direction. At least one member of the band, which had advertised its pyrotechnics prowess as a selling point, died in the blaze.
The tumult produced desperate cries for assistance that are still echoing on social media. “Fire at KISS help,” wrote Michele Cardoso, a 20-year-old student, in a post on Facebook that has resonated across the nation. Her friends frantically replied to the post, which appeared to be delayed from when the fire was said to have been ignited. She died in the blaze, along with her boyfriend, João Paulo Pozzobon.
Those who survived did so after a group of patrons overpowered security guards, who initially kept people from fleeing out of concern that they were trying to leave without paying their tabs. By the time it became obvious that was not the case, the clubgoers inside had begun to die, largely from asphyxiation.
Among the first emergency responders at the scene around 3 a.m., Capt. Edi Garcia of Santa Maria’s police force said in an interview that it immediately became clear to him that many patrons had sought to escape through the nightclub’s bathrooms, seeking another route out of the building aside from the main doors.
The bathrooms, he said, resembled a scene out of a horror movie: dozens of bodies piled atop one another. “People went to the bathrooms looking for windows, they fell unconscious, then others crawled on top of them to get to the windows, and that’s how it went on happening,” Captain Garcia said.
According to a Brazilian news report, another rescue worker found a victim’s cellphone in the charred nightclub, noticing that it had 104 missed calls on it from someone called “Mãe” — Mother.
Stung by such details and the death toll, the authorities moved quickly here to investigate the blaze. One of the club’s owners was held for questioning along with the two band members, according to an investigator, Ranolfo Vieira Jr., who said they could be held for several days. Another owner of the club later turned himself in for questioning on Monday.
“I died in Santa Maria today,” the writer Fabrício Carpinejar of Rio Grande do Sul, a state of rolling pampas, or plains, in which this university city is situated, said in a poem published on the front page of the newspaper O Globo. “I died on Rua dos Andradas,” he said — the street of the club.
Santa Maria, with a population of about 260,000, seemed like a city in shock on Monday. Many stores were shuttered and academic activities were suspended at the universities that are the city’s economic lifeblood. Students could be found on the street, quietly sobbing, or in the gymnasium where families and friends came to grieve among coffins lined up under basketball nets.
“I’m burying my wife today,” said Leandro Buss, 35, whose wife, Marilene Castro, 33, died at the club. He and their 16-year-old son were among the families at Santa Maria’s gymnasium. He appeared shellshocked, explaining that he had avoided going to the nightclub over the weekend because he was away competing in a triathlon.
“We’ll see who was responsible for this,” said Mr. Buss, a computer technician, staring at the ground. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’ll see some justice since so many people were killed.”
At one of Santa Maria’s cemeteries, families gathered in different corners on Monday to bury their loved ones. Wailing mothers could be heard throughout the grounds. At one ceremony for Silvio Beuren, an agronomy student killed in the fire, the proud culture of the gauchos, the horsemen of the pampas of southern Brazil, was on display.
Eloi Irigaray, 40, a gaucho astride his horse at Mr. Beuren’s burial, read a poem of his own, which spoke about loss, resilience and indignation, perhaps, at those who oversee Brazil:
“Here in Santa Maria / my bulwark persists / And I’ve been demanding respect from those who command the nation.”
