RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – A fire tore through a small hotel in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre on Friday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 11, authorities said.
The fire broke out in the early hours in the three-storey building, which provided affordable housing in single rooms and had a contract with the municipal government to shelter homeless people.
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 he managed to leave his room at around 2am 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 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.
