Story highlights Cell phones left in the club ring, go unanswered amid the ruins 
 
 The club's license had expired in August and had not been renewed 
 
 At least 80 of those killed were students at the Federal University of Santa Maria 
 
 Workers combing through the charred wreckage of Kiss nightclub in southern Brazil on Sunday encountered the eerie sound of ringing cell phones. 
 
 "It was a really complicated scene. A lot of smoke, a lot of shoes that was left, cell phones, because everybody tried to get out of there running," he said. "While we were there, we saw the cell phones were ringing. It was parents, friends, trying to know about what was happening and nobody was answering." 
 
 A fire swept through the packed, popular nightclub in Santa Maria early Sunday, killing at least 233 people -- enough to fill a large plane -- Brazilian Health Minister Alexandro Padilha told reporters. Of those, 185 have been identified so far. 
 
 Many apparently died from smoke inhalation. Others were trampled in the rush for the exits, one security guard told Band News. 
 
 More than 90 people were hospitalized, Padilha said, including 14 patients with severe burns. 
 
 Map: Brazil nightclub fire 
 
 About 2,000 people were inside the club when the fire broke out -- double the maximum capacity of 1,000, said Guido de Melo, a state fire official. 
 
 Investigators have received preliminary information that security guards stopped people from exiting the club, he told Globo TV. 
 
 "People who were inside the facility informed us ... that security guards blocked the exit to prevent people there from leaving, and that's when the crowd starting panicking, and the tragedy grew worse," he said. 
 
 The fire started "from out of nowhere" on a stage at the club and quickly spread to the ceiling, witness Jairo Vieira told Band News. 
 
 "People started running," survivor Luana Santos Silva told Globo TV. "I fell on the floor." 
 
 There was a pyrotechnics show going on inside the club when the fire started. Authorities stopped short of blaming it for the blaze, saying the cause was still under investigation. 
 
 The Kiss nightclub is popular with young people in Santa Maria, which is home to a number of universities and colleges, including the Federal University of Santa Maria. At least 80 of those killed Sunday were students at that school, it said. 
 
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 The blaze broke out during a weekend when students were celebrating the end of summer. Many universities are set to resume classes on Monday. 
 
 Video from the scene showed firefighters shooting streams of water at the club and shirtless men trying to break down a wall with axes. 
 
 Smoke billowed outside the front of the building as the stench of fire filled the air, said Max Muller, who was riding by on his motorbike when he saw the blaze. 
 
 Muller recorded video of a chaotic scene outside the club, which showed emergency crews tending to victims and dazed clubgoers standing in the street. Bodies lay on the ground beside ambulances. 
 
 Friends who were inside the club told him that many struggled to find the exits in the dark. Muller, who was not inside the club Sunday morning but has been there twice before, said there were no exit signs over the doors. It is rare to see such signs in Brazilian clubs. 
 
 Valderci Oliveira, a state lawmaker, told Band News that he saw piles of bodies in the club's bathroom when he arrived at the scene hours after the blaze. It looked "like a war zone," he said. 
 
 Police told Band News that 90% of the victims were found in that part of the club. 
 
 The roof collapsed in several parts of the building, trapping many inside, said Fernandes, the reporter from Band News. 
 
 For others, escaping was complicated by the fact that guards initially stopped people from leaving, he said, echoing comments from the state fire official. 
 
 "Some guards thought at first that it was a fight, a huge fight that happened inside the club and closed the doors so that the people could not leave without paying their bills from the club," Fernandes said. 
 
 The deadly fire is sure to shine a spotlight on safety in Brazil, which is set to host the World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2016. 
 
 Many wept as they searched for information outside a local gymnasium where bodies were taken for identification later Sunday. Inside, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff met with family members and friends as they waited on bleachers for word of their loved ones. 
 
 Rousseff became teary-eyed as she spoke of the fire to reporters in Chile earlier Sunday. She had been attending a regional summit there, but cut short the trip and returned to Brazil early to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy. 
 
 "The Brazilian people are the ones who need me today," she said. "I want to tell the people of Santa Maria in this time of sadness that we are all together." 
 
 The fire started around 2 a.m. after the acoustic insulation in the Kiss nightclub caught fire, said Civil Defense Col. Adilomar Silva. 
 
 An accordionist who had been performing onstage with a band when the blaze broke out was among the dead, drummer Eliel de Lima told Globo TV. 
 
 Police were questioning the club's owner and interviewing witnesses as part of an investigation into what caused the blaze, state-run Agencia Brasil reported. 
 
 The club's license had expired in August and had not been renewed, local fire official Moises da Silva Fuchs told Globo TV. 
 
 The incident called to mind a 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island where pyrotechnics used by the heavy metal band Great White ignited a blaze that killed 100 people. 
 
 Pyrotechnics were also involved in a 2004 nightclub fire in Argentina that killed 194 people and a 2009 explosion at a nightclub in Russia that left more than 100 dead. ||||| At least 232 people have been killed in a Brazilian nightclub fire sparked by what witnesses described as a flare or firework lit by members of a band performing onstage. 
 
 Many of the victims died inhaling toxic fumes during the rush to escape through the venue's single exit, according to local media reports in the southern city of Santa Maria. 
 
 Police Major Cleberson Braida Bastianello said officials counted 232 bodies brought for identification to a makeshift mortuary at the city gymnasium. He lowered the death toll from the 245 earlier believed killed. 
 
 Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless, young male partygoers joined firefighters in wielding axes and sledgehammers, pounding at windows and walls to break through to those trapped inside. Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately trying to find help others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. 
 
 "There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network. 
 
 Silva added that firefighters and ambulances responded quickly after the fire broke out, but that it spread too fast inside the packed club for them to help. 
 
 Michele Pereira, another survivor, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage and that the fire broke out after band members lit flares. 
 
 "The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward. At that point the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak but in a matter of seconds it spread," Pereira said. 
 
 After the fire was extinguished, bodies were ferried by truck to the gymnasium. The Globo newspaper said the first truck carried 67 bodies and the second 70. 
 
 "People started panicking and ended up treading on each other," a fire chief, Guido de Melo, told local media. 
 
 Fire department officials will issue a detailed report after a full investigation. 
 
 Many of the dead are likely to be students because Santa Maria is a university centre for the Rio Grande do Sul region and the usual class schedule had been disrupted by strikes. ||||| SANTA MARIA, Brazil A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said. 
 
 The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was ignited by sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects. They set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling and the club rapidly filled with toxic smoke, local fire officials said. 
 
 Most of those who died were suffocated by fumes, fire brigade Sergeant Robson Muller told Reuters. Others were crushed in the stampede. 
 
 "Smoke filled the place instantly, the heat became unbearable," survivor Murilo Tiescher, a medical student, told GloboNews TV. "People could not find the only exit. They went to the toilet thinking it was the exit and many died there." 
 
 Fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that club bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling. 
 
 The tragedy, in a packed venue in one of Brazil's most prosperous states, comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls ahead of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation. 
 
 In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a local gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue. 
 
 "It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away." 
 
 President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims at the gym. 
 
 "All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred. 
 
 News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the nightclub called Boate Kiss. Gradually, grisly details emerged. 
 
 "BARRIER OF THE DEAD" 
 
 "We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside." 
 
 Officials said more than 1,000 people may have been in the club, possibly exceeding its legal capacity. Though Internet postings about the venue suggested as many as 2,000 people at times have crammed into the club, Pedroso de Melo said no more than half that should have been inside. 
 
 He said the club was authorized to be open but its permit was in the process of being renewed. 
 
 However, Pedroso de Melo did point to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from leaving. 
 
 The club's management said in a statement that its staff was trained and prepared to deal with any emergency. It said it would help authorities with their investigation. 
 
 When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out in the chaos. 
 
 "It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds." 
 
 Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were getting trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film." 
 
 Band member Rodrigo Martins said the fire started after the fourth or fifth song and the extinguisher did not work. 
 
 "It could have been a short circuit, there were many cables there," Martins told Porto Alegre's Radio Gaucha station. He said there was only one door and it was locked. A band member died in the fire. 
 
 CLUB OWNER QUESTIONED 
 
 One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews reported. 
 
 TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit. 
 
 Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub. Local authorities said 120 men and 113 women died in the fire. 
 
 Piles of shoes remained in the burnt out club, along with tufts of hair pulled out by people fleeing desperately. Firemen who removed bodies said victims' cell phones were still ringing. 
 
 The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people [ID:nL1N0AW2NR], and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze. 
 
 The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered to be relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes. 
 
 The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe. 
 
 Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more organized than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe. 
 
 Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and messages of sympathy poured in from foreign leaders. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)
– A fireworks display in a Brazilian nightclub went horribly awry last night, spawning a fire that police say killed upward of 233 people, reports CNN. Police on the scene at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria have already removed 159 bodies, reports Reuters, and rescuers are still looking for more. "People started panicking and ended up treading on each other," the local fire chief tells the BBC, which notes that there was apparently only one exit in the facility. The number of injured is also in the hundreds; local media report that the club had a capacity of 2,000 and was believed to be full on a Saturday night. "It was really fast. There was a lot of smoke, really dark smoke," says survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29. "We were only able to get out quickly because we were in a VIP area close to the door." The AP runs down a list of other deadly nightclub fires here.