Sunday 28 February 2016

The Tragedy from the ”Colectiv” Nightclub

By Ioana Barbura, Coordinating teacher: Tamara Motorga, School: Samuil Vulcan National College

A huge tragedy, maybe one of the biggest tragedies in the last 20 years, happened on 30th October 2015, at the Colectiv nightclub from Bucharest. A lot of people, more exactly 60 innocent ones, died in blaze through one of the most terrible ways of dying: burning alive. Try to imagine this appalling scene:  your friends burning in flames, everybody screaming, fighting for their lives, trying to escape the nightmarish place. A real horror movie!


Just imagine being a parent and going to the morgue and your child being so burned that you can’t even recognize him. Some victims had burns over 98% to 50% of their bodies. The victims who had burns over more than 50% of their bodies died on hospital beds, either in Romania, Austria, Holland or even on the road.
What happened at the Colectiv nightclub is considered to have been indifference from the members of the band and from the owners of the club. The guys from the band shouldn’t have lit fireworks in such a small and closed place, which at first was thought to be a simply inoffensive thing. The owners should have been informed the moment they had those antiphonic sponges put on the ceiling that those ones easily catch fire. The ceiling lit in 30 seconds and pieces of sponge started to fall on the people.
Why were 400 persons allowed in when there was room for only 100? The entrance door was closed at the moment of the fire and the 400 people started thundering upon it trying to save themselves. Even people who didn’t have burns died because of the smoke they inhaled.  There was a man who risked his life to rescue the others. Claudiu Petre got out among the first but he turned back inside to save others’ lives and eventually died after saving the lives of 5 other people. He is a true hero!
       Innocent people died though all they wanted was to have fun, to see a live concert, to get of the monotony: school –house-Facebook and so on. No, they were not Satanists or whatever else people say, they were just young people who wanted to have fun, not knowing their end was so close. Not even their song ‘Goodbye to Gravity’ was a Satanist one.
The people mobilised very fast with the victims, they donated blood and tried to help. The majority of clubs and bars in the country closed in solidarity with the victims. Three days of national mourning for the victims were declared.

Sources:
Sources for pictures:

No comments:

Post a Comment