Joelma Building fire

Joelma Building fire

The building on fire while firefighters attempt to extinguish it
Date	1 February 1974
Location	São Paulo, Brazil
Deaths	179-189
Non-fatal injuries	300+

Edifício Praça da Bandeira, formerly known as the 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. Because flammable materials had been used to furnish the interior, the entire building was engulfed in flames within twenty minutes. Of the 756 people occupying the building at the time, 179 were killed and 300 injured.

The Joelma Building fire happened less than two years after another deadly fire in downtown São Paulo, that of the Andraus Building. As of 2021, the Joelma fire remains the second-worst skyscraper fire ever in terms of the death toll, after the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.^[1]