What was supposed to be a relaxing Friday night
\nout with friends in a Bucharest nightclub turned, in a matter of seconds, into
\nan inferno for hundreds of young people who were unlucky to be in the wrong
\nplace at the wrong time. Artists, photographers, journalists, architects, local
\nand foreign students, corporate employees and engineers had come to Colectiv on
\nOctober 30th for the launch of a new album by the rock band Goodbye
\nto Gravity. 64 of them died and more than 100 were wounded in the tragedy that
\nplunged Romania into mourning and wide-scale street protests, which eventually
\nled to the resignation of the Social-Democratic Prime Minister Victor Ponta. <\/p>\n
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Half a year since the tragedy, the General
\nProsecutor’s office has published the results of the investigation into the
\nevents, concluding the disaster’s main cause was a complete disregard to fire
\nsafety regulations and practices. According to prosecutors, the fire, which
\nburned with temperatures of 900 degrees centigrade, reached to the ceiling in
\n33 seconds, while the people inside desperately tried to open the club’s second
\ndoor for minutes. <\/p>\n
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A survivor said the concert opened with
\nfireworks display that shot sparks to the club’s ceiling. One of the club’s
\npillars was immediately engulfed by flames, which went up to the ceiling right
\naway. The investigation has also revealed that fire extinguishers were well
\nbeyond their expiry date and that a man tried to put out the fire with beer. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Several people, including the club’s owners,
\nwill face trial. The three owners are facing several charges including
\ncriminally negligent manslaughter over failure to observe fire prevention and
\nsafety regulations. Their statements on the sound-absorbing materials used in
\nrefurbishing the club do not coincide with those of the builders. According to
\nrepresentatives of the company that carried out the refurbishing works, the
\nowners chose cheap non-fireproof materials, whereas the owners said they had
\nbeen given assurances that only fireproof materials were used in the process.
\nThe owners have also been accused of having sold more tickets than they were
\nsupposed to and of having allowed a firework show in the absence of safety
\nmeasures. The owner of the fireworks company will also be brought before the
\nmagistrates for the purchase of pyrotechnic materials that didn’t have
\ninstructions in Romanian and because the staff that handled the fireworks
\nlacked proper qualifications. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romanian prosecutors have made public the final results of their investigation into the fire at Colectiv nightclub last autumn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":66077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29434],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-68346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-colectiv-fire"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n