Rio's famed Carnival to be held next month has been dealt a devastating blow when a fire destroyed workshops containing some of the floats and thousands of intricate costumes made for the event.
"We are heartbroken," said Jorge Castanheira, president of the League of Samba Schools which puts on the yearly event. "Everything was practically ready for the Carnival."
"A dream has been thrown in the trash. Months of work, and it's all lost," one costume worker, Jose da Silva Junior, lamented to reporters.
Several hours after the blaze gutted part of Samba City, a facility dedicated to Rio's Carnival preparations, around 100 firefighters managed to bring the situation under control.
Officials said that despite the ravages of the fire, Carnival would go ahead as usual, with Rio's spectacular parades of dancers in feathers and multi-million-dollar allegorical floats to take place March 6 and 7.
Although other Carnival parades are held across this country of 193 million people, none comes close to the grandeur and complexity of Rio's event, which unfolds in a special stadium attended by thousands of ticket-holders and local and foreign VIPs.
The inferno shocked all of Brazil, which ranks Rio's Carnival as its premier display of national pride -- at least as important as top football games. It calls the event the "the biggest show on Earth."
"When I saw the pictures on TV, I had the same feeling as when September 11 happened. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," the director of one of Uniao da Ilha's floats, Paulinho Barbicha, 61, told AFP.
The fire also brought potential disappointment for the estimated 500,000 to 700,000 foreign tourists who are to escape the northern hemisphere winter by taking part in Rio's summer days of Carnival partying.
The cause of the blaze was not known.
Police said they believed it unlikely to have been a deliberate act, even though several of the clubs -- called samba schools -- that put on the Carnival parades have links to criminal outfits operating in Rio's slums.
Workshops belonging to three of the samba schools -- Portela, Uniao da Ilha and Grande Rio -- were destroyed, putting them at a disadvantage against the other nine top schools they will be competing against during the parades.
Rio's tourism official, Antonio Pedro, told reporters that meetings would be held to see if any of the three affected schools would have to bow out of next month's main parades.
"If any need to drop out because of the fire, that will be a decision made together with the school," he said.
The fire erupted early in the morning, well before most workshop employees started their day.
No one was badly hurt, though one craftsman, Simon Lacerda, said he had to jump from a fourth-story window after being woken by the smell of smoke.
"I jumped, I landed on a float and I went home," he said.
Flames spread quickly, fueled by the highly flammable plastics used in the construction of the Carnival costumes and floats.
Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, vowed that "Samba City will start to be rebuilt from this week" and insisted every single samba school will take part.
Helio de Oliveira, the president of the Grande Rio samba school, said: "The only thing that didn't go up in flames is our intention to be in the parades."
His school lost ninety percent of its Carnival preparations -- representing months of work and an estimated five million dollars.
"I'll do the parade in bare feet if I have to," the school's dancing queen, Cris Viana, said, tears flowing as she surveyed the charred remains of props and costumes.
Ney Filardes, head of the Uniao da Ilha school, said her group lost 2,000 costumes in the blaze.
Samba City was opened in 2005 to bring together all the workshops of Rio's top samba school preparing for the yearly Carnival. Before that date, work was carried out in the city's slums where the schools have their roots.
Since winning the right to host the 2016 Olympic Games, Brazil has been touting its organization of Carnival in Rio as an example of its prowess in putting on world-class events.
