Tragedy in a party town

Bangkok is a party town, and spectacular New Year celebrations are held in many of the clubs which have made the city’s nightlife renowned around the world.

The Santika was a spacious, two-storey club, stylishly decorated and a magnet for partygoers. It as one of Bangkok’s most popular entertainment venues, packed with young Thais and foreigners on weekends.

That all changed on New Year’s Eve. Just two hours after fire broke out, the Santika was a smouldering shell and 60 people were dead, including one unidentified Canadian.

The BBC said people at the club reported seeing small fireworks being tossed from the stage to celebrate the New Year, then noticed flames around the stage and creeping up to the ceiling. Suddenly the flames seemed to be everywhere, and the lights went out, witnesses said.

Revelers stumbled towards the single entrance, trying to light their way with their mobile phones.

Many retreated to the toilets to avoid the flames.The fire brigade managed to rescue those in the women’s toilet, but those trapped in the men’s toilet were not so lucky.

The police say it will take up to two weeks to establish the cause of the fire, but already one police officer has described the fire precautions at the club as "sub-standard."

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has expressed disbelief that fireworks could have been allowed inside a building packed with perhaps 1,000 partygoers.

Eyewitnesses say the Santika had only one known exit and no emergency lighting.

If so, it was no worse than the hundreds of other clubs in this city, that open, close and then re-open again, sometimes under different names, with bewildering frequency.

Bangkok’s dance clubs, like most of its famous nightlife, inhabit a shadowy world of hazy, loosely-enforced regulation and under-the-table payments to mafia-type figures.