It took Adriana dos Santos and her six children 20 minutes to scramble to safety, feeling their way down seven dark flights of stairs as the flames spread around them.
An hour later, the 24-story building where they’d been living in downtown São Paulo collapsed, as firefighters attempted to rescue a man who’d reportedly re-entered the building to save a woman and her children.
Like many others who had been squatted in the block, Dos Santos escaped with nothing but her life. Others were even less lucky. “People are buried under the rubble,” she said.
Forty-nine people remain missing after the blaze, although a spokesman for the city’s military brigade said they may not have been in the building when the fire tore through the block early on Tuesday.
First lieutenant Guilherme Derrite said that 317 people were registered as living in the building, although local media reported that the figure could be as high as 428.
At least four people were known to have been trapped in the building when it collapsed. “It would a miracle if anyone that was inside survived,” Derrite said.
The fire has shone a spotlight on desperate housing situation in São Paulo, which has a housing deficit of 1.3m homes, according to latest figures from Brazil’s João Pinheiro Foundation.
Thousands are forced to squat in precarious abandoned buildings that lack any kind of safety prevision or on vacant lots on the city’s outskirts.
In Brazil, squatting is legal providing the property is abandoned and performs no social function, and São Paulo is home to several highly organized housing rights movements, many of whom have succeeded in turning occupied buildings or vacant lots into public housing units for low-income earners.
But the fire is expected to complicate matters for squatting groups no matter how professional, organized or well intentioned. Activists already warn that housing movements will likely face a backlash while the core issue – a lack of affordable housing in Latin America’s biggest city – will go unaddressed.
Dos Santos Silva and dozens of other survivors are now camped out by a church less than 100m from the heap of grey smoldering rubble of the collapsed building.
Before the fire, she eked out a living hawking chewing gum and sweets in central São Paulo. On a good day, she could make R$50 (£10.38).
The building, a former federal police HQ, was abandoned more than 10 years ago and Adriana said that she moved in as a squatter two years ago after she became homeless.
Small two bedroom apartments on São Paulo’s outskirts often go for R$500 – 700 (£103 – £145) in areas sometimes two hours from the centre, while minimum wage in Brazil is R$950 a month. Unemployment is highest in years at around 12%.
“What has happened here is an accident and a tragedy but by no means an isolated case,” said Sâmia Bonfim, a city councilwoman with the leftwing Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) Party.
Ricardo Luciano, 41, who declared himself as the leader of the movement that occupied the building said that survivors of the fire would remain camped by the church in impromptu protest camp.
“If we go to the shelters, we will be forgotten about, we are here demanding our right to housing,” he said.
