"These schools have something that is the trademark of Rio's carnival: lots of passion," said Paes, a samba-enthusiast and supporter of the Portela school. One by one, giant carnival floats were dragged from the warehouses first a 6 metre-tall swan with fluorescent pink and blue wings then the grimacing skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex and a raging bull flanked by two armour-clad knights on horseback.ĭuring a visit to the devastated Samba City, Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, vowed that carnival would continue. Samba school workers scrambled to salvage what they could from the blaze. "If it was my school I'd be crying like hell."Īround him about 80 firemen fought to control the blaze. "It's terrible – all that work and it is gone," said Marco Antonio Mansilha, a 36-year-old costume designer from the Unidos da Tijuca group. Portela's directors said they had lost at least 2,500 costumes. In an interview with a local newspaper, Grande Rio's costume designer, Paulo Vitor, said the fire had caused an estimated 10m reais (£3.6m) of damage. Mara Minchillo, 19, a British gap-year student from Sussex, who is volunteering at the Samba City with the Salgueiro school, said: "We saw the smoke from where we are living and thought, 'What's that?'" A giant plume of black smoke could be seen for miles around. The flames reportedly raced through the warehouses, which were packed with sequined costumes and polystyrene statues.
Witnesses said the fire began at around 6am and quickly spread through four warehouses, belonging to the Grande Rio, Portela and União da Ilha schools, and Liesa, the carnival organiser. "Our school was gearing up to win carnival and I don't know if in 29 days we can put on a spectacle on the same level as we had hoped. The penny hasn't dropped yet," Rodrigues said, wiping tears from his eyes. Stood in front of Grande Rio's warehouse, transformed into a smoldering tangle of metal and concrete, Cahê Rodrigues, the school's artistic director said 98% of his school's floats and costumes had been destroyed. However, those dreams appear to have gone up in smoke, after a fierce blaze ripped through Samba City on Monday, a complex of warehouses in central Rio where the city's top 12 schools were making their final preparations.
0 kommentar(er)
