61 clubbers died and over 300 were injured after fire swept through top Bangkok nightclub Santika Club during a New Year’s Eve party.
Over 1,000 predominantly upper class Thais and a sprinkling of foreigners were celebrating at the club when a firework reportedly sparked a conflagration which tore through the two story building in minutes.
London expat, Alex Wargacki, 29, who narrowly escaped after being rescued by an unknown stranger, spoke to reporters from his hospital bed, admitting he’d long considered the venue as ‘a bit of a death trap’.
‘But that's like so many places here. That's Thailand. You come to expect it’, the investment banker, who’d lived in Bangkok for four years, told the Daily Mail.
'Suddenly to the right of the stage I saw a firework being let off amongst a crowd of partygoers. It shot right across the room,' he recalled of the moment the fire started.
'I don't know exactly how long, but it seemed no time at all when the whole place, walls and ceilings were ablaze. Then everyone started running for the door. But the door seemed tiny and people were jammed up against it. If there was another way out, none of us knew about it, and all the windows were barred.”
His account bore macabre similarities to that of Argentine clubber Fabian Zamudeo, 22, who four years to the day escaped from a fire at Buenos Aires nightclub Republica de la Crogmanon in which 190 revellers perished.
"Someone from the crowd tossed a flare and, immediately, there were flames," said Fabian, “Parts of the roof started falling down in flames and people started running, knocking over the speakers and light stands. People were choking on smoke and I tried to push as many people out as I could." (AOL News).
Many of the victims in both fires were crushed to death as clubbers stampeded towards exit doors.
"People were pushing and jumping over each other trying to get out," Buenos Aires reveler Jose Maria Godoy told AP, "It was like a human wave. As people fell down running for the door, others just simply ran over them or pushed them down."
The fire prompted Argentine authorities to close the city’s clubs for two weeks with many clubs eventually shutting down for months or even permanently. Speaking to Dancemusic.about.com four months later, British superstar DJ Pete Tong said he was unsurprised at the subsequent club crackdown.
“It is a serious thing that happened and you can't expect it to just blow over. Some venues have got to be made safer, people have got to adjust the way they run the events, and there are things to be done,” he told About.com’s Ryan Gawn.
“I think that any city in the world that had to encounter that kind of incident, would respond the same. It doesn't really matter whether one person dies or it's as horrific as it was here where 190 people died, but it does take something like that to shake people into action and sort things out,” he added.
