Witnesses to the night club fire disaster in Santa Maria, Brazil, was thought to have left some 231 people dead,have spoken to local media of the speed of the fire's spread and their desperate struggle to escape.
Hundreds of revellers had packed into the Kiss club, many of them believed to be students.
Ingrid Goldani, 20, who had been working at the club for six weeks, said two bands were playing on Saturday night.
Speaking to local newspaper Diario de Santa Maria, she said the fire had begun after a member of one of the bands lit a flare (others said a firework) about 10 minutes into the show, setting fire to part of the stage.
According to her, the fire took hold of the club in less than three minutes. "The band tried to put out the fire with water, but they didn't manage to," she said. "After this, they tried with a fire extinguisher. It was all really quick."
Stroke of luck Fernanda Freire Gomes Bona, 23, the nightclub's photographer, was in a VIP area when the fire started.
"Because I was near to the door, I ran out," she told Globo newspaper.
"Someone had called me over to take some photos in the VIP area. Because of this I was there, it has a better view. Normally I stay in the middle of the crowd. It was luck. If I wasn't working, I wouldn't have been in the VIP area."
She too saw the band member with the flare or firework: "I saw some sparks, lots of shouting, and I thought it was some kind of fight.
"That's when they shouted 'Fire!'. I saw people running... and I ran out too."
According to Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, a 26-year-old medical student, security guards did not initially understand what was happening and tried to stop people leaving.
"People were screaming 'there's a fire' but the security guards didn't budge and tried to keep the door shut," he told told Zero Hora newspaper.
"Five or six people knocked over one security guard and knocked down the door. It was the only exit.
"The first people to get out tried to pull out whoever was still inside. Hands and arms appeared from the curtain of smoke. We pulled out various people. I pulled out a girl by the hair. It was chaos, the worst desperation."
Other eyewitnesses said that once the security guards realised how serious the fire was, they tried to help people escape.
'Stained with smoke'
Luana Santos Silva, 23, managed to escape with the help of her sister, Aline, 29, who dragged her to safety.
"We looked up at the ceiling in front of the stage and it was catching fire," she told Brazil's Globo TV.
"My sister grabbed me and dragged me out on the ground."
The exit, she said, was a "small door for lots of people to come out by". Aline added: "We managed to see it in time and to get out quickly, before the smoke began to spread.
"The smoke spread really quickly, it didn't give enough time for people to get out. "I think people started to feel unwell, and then they began to come out covered in black smoke stains."
The witness commended the emergency services: "Help arrived really quickly, ambulances, police."
President Dilma Rousseff, who cut short a visit to Chile, has been visiting survivors at the city's Caridade hospital along with government ministers.
She said earlier that everything possible would be done to help the injured and the families of the victims.
"I would also like to say to the Brazilian people and to the people of Santa Maria that we stand together at this time, and that even though there's a lot of sadness, we will pull through," she said, speaking from Chile.
In a tweet, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Tarso Genro, said it was a "sad Sunday" and that all possible action was being taken in response to the fire. He would be in the city later on Sunday, he added.
A firefighter told BBC News he had never seen such a tragedy in his life, with the victims "so young".
The priority for the authorities is now to identify the dead with many distressed relatives arriving at the scene, but in the hours ahead the focus will turn to the cause of this accident and safety procedures at the club, the BBC's Gary Duffy reports from Sao Paulo.
BBC News. update
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