In the early hours of this Friday, from 2 am, a fire hit the Garoa guesthouse, in Porto Alegre, leaving 10 dead and 11 injured. One of the residents, who has been there for almost two weeks, says that the others at the inn were in a state of shock. “Everything happened very quickly. When I saw it, everything was on fire. I woke up scared and ran out with my wife. There was nothing I could do, it was a huge scare”, he says, visibly emotional. “Thank God we were able to save ourselves from this very sad situation.”
He highlighted the solidarity of the people who welcomed him after the fire. “We were very well received, good people who helped us. We were living on the street, on cardboard, and they took us in. It was a very sad tragedy”, he laments. Regarding the number of residents there, he does not have precise information, but estimates that there were between 30 and 40 people. The resident managed to remove his documents, cell phone and some belongings before fleeing the flames.
O resident managed to escape the building at around two-thirty in the morning, when the fire had already spread to the second floor. He reports that some neighbors managed to escape, but others, unfortunately, were not as lucky. He also highlighted access control at the inn, stating that it is necessary to present identification at the entrance to enter.
He gained access to the location through the intermediation of the Porto Alegre Intercommunity Service Association. In the end, he expressed his gratitude for having emerged from the fire unharmed, highlighting that “it was God who gave us life.”
Resident asks for help in nightclub
Another resident says that I was in a friend’s room talking when I noticed the flames of the fire. “We were in my friend’s room, just talking, when suddenly he saw a flash downstairs. We went out to see what was happening and found the room below ours completely on fire. A mattress, which was propped up nearby from the door, it was completely on fire”, reported the resident.
He then ran to the inn’s lobby to alert the doorman and then headed to the street, where He asked the bouncer at a nearby nightclub for help so he could call the fire department.. Meanwhile, she shouted to the other residents of the building to get out as quickly as possible.
When asked if he managed to get out through the door, the resident confirmed that he did, explaining: “Yes, I left through the entrance. I didn’t have to jump, but a lot of people had to jump to escape the flames.”
Regarding the origin of the fire, he mentioned that he was not sleeping and that he saw a flash on the bedroom wall. When he went downstairs, he found the mattress on fire inside the room, without understanding how the fire started, as the room was empty and there was no resident there. So far, there is no information about the health status of the person who jumped from the building and is hospitalized. The causes of the fire are still being investigated by the competent authorities.
*With information from reporters Vanessa Pedroso, from Rádio Guaíba and Marcel Horowitz, from Correio do Povo
