The Associated Press
SANTA MARIA, Brazil - The lead police investigator into a nightclub fire that killed 234 people in southern Brazil says the music group playing at the time lit a flare designed for outdoor use that set the club's ceiling on fire.
Police inspector Marcelo Arigony said in a news conference Tuesday that "the flare was for outdoor use only and the people who lit them know that."
He said the investigation will take 20 days and then state prosecutors will determine whether to file charges in the early Sunday fire. Preliminary information had shown that the Kiss nightclub had no sprinklers and no emergency exits.
Arigony said "any child could have seen that this establishment should not have been open."
Local authorities earlier said 231 people died in the blaze, but the Rio Grande do Sul state raised the number Tuesday to 234 to account for three additional victims whose names didn't appear on the original list.
One of the victims had originally been confused with another person with a similar name. Another was identified early Sunday but didn't appear on a previous list.
The blaze broke out early Sunday at a packed nightclub in Santa Maria, a college town of about 260,000 in southern Brazil. Police say early investigations point to pyrotechnics used by a band as the likely cause of the fire.
Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation. More than 122 injured people remain hospitalized.
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