From the archive: towering inferno in So Paulo, 1974
A deadly warning from Brazil on the fire hazards of high-rise buildings
On 1 February 1974, a huge fire ripped through the Joelma Building in São Paulo killing at least 179 people. It remains the worst skyscraper fire in terms of fatalities, after the September 11 attacks. A few months after the tragedy, Anthony Peagam wondered whether something similar could happen in the UK (Observer Magazine, 5 May 1974, ‘A day of terror – and its lessons’).
The fire was started by an electrical short in an air-conditioner unit. Clara Lucia Dias Gomes, 27, was one of the first to smell the smoke and was able to make it down to the street. ‘When I got there, the flames were already racing up through the building,’ she said. ‘Already people were jumping from the windows.’
Killing at least 179 people, this remains the most lethal skyscraper fire, after the 11 September attacksFire crews took up to 20 minutes to reach the office block, ‘inching their way through the traffic jams that were now rapidly building up in the city centre’. Their equipment, Peagam said, was ‘patently inadequate’ – the ladders could only reach to the 14th of the 25 floors. Helicopters were dispatched, but at least 20 died waiting to be airlifted – the roof was totally unsuitable to land on.
There had been a major warning in 1972, when 16 people died in an almost identical blaze in the Andraus department store in the city. That too was built without a sprinkler system, ‘with totally inadequate escape stairways and without fire extinguishers and basic fire-fighting equipment’.
‘Alarmed by the fires in Brazil – and, perhaps, by the bomb attack on the Post Office Tower in 1971,’ Peagam wrote, ‘the Greater London Fire Brigade has for some months been investigating the possibility of having a twin-engined helicopter on permanent contract hire’.
‘It is certainly unlikely that any modern building in Britain would be as packed with combustible materials as the Joelma,’ concluded Peagam, referring to the building’s interior. As the Grenfell Tower inquiry heard, a combustible exterior can be just as deadly.
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