Brazil Joelma Building
Edifício Praça da Bandeira, better known by its former name, Joelma Building, is a
25-story building in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, completed in 1971, located at Avenida
9 de Julho, 225. On 1 February 1974, an air conditioning unit on the twelfth floor
overheated, starting a fire. There were 756 people in the building at the time.
Because flammable materials had been used to furnish the interior, the entire building
was engulfed in flames within 20 minutes. The fire was extinguished at 1:30pm, with 179
deaths and 300 people injured.
This happened less than two years after another deadly fire in downtown São Paulo, that
of the Andraus Building. As of 2019, the Joelma fire remains the second-worst skyscraper
fire ever in terms of the death toll, after the collapse of the twin World Trade Center
towers in New York City on September 11, 2001