Rio De Janeiro: In an unfortunate incident, at least 10 people were killed after a fire broke out at a small hotel in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre on Friday, according to authorities. The fire broke in the early hours of Friday at the three-storey building which had a contract with the municipal government to shelter the homeless, leaving 11 people injured.
The establishment didn't have proper licensing and lacked an emergency fire plan, the fire brigade of the Rio Grande do Sul state said. A witness told local media that he managed to leave his room at around 2 am after the fire broke out, dashing through smoke as flames approached.
"I only had time to put on my flip-flops and run. My sister, who lived on the third floor, ended up being burned to death," 56-year-old Marcelo Wagner Schelech told the daily newspaper Zero Hora. Known as Garoa Floresta, the hotel is part of the Garoa group, a chain that has 22 other small hotels in Porto Alegre. In 2022, a fire broke out in another one of the hotels, killing one person and injuring 11.
Porto Alegre Mayor Sebastião Melo said in a press conference his administration had signed an agreement with the company in 2020 for the use of 400 of its rooms to shelter homeless people. Melo said that the contract will now be investigated, and the chain's 22 units, all of which are providers of social housing, will be inspected.
Porto Alegre's city hall had contracts for 16 rooms at the small hotel that caught fire on Friday. Eight of the 11 people rescued from the fire are still hospitalized, two of them still in serious condition but under no life threat, local authorities said. Two of the people who sought medical attention were homeless. All of the victims will now receive shelter elsewhere.
(AP)
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