NewsTracker Answers for week of Jan. 28, 2013

Q: A fire ignited by a flare from a live band’s fireworks swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students in southern Brazil, leaving at least 232 people dead, police said. Where is Brazil on this map?

Circle the area on this map


Q: President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile and rushed back to Brazil. She said everything possible would be done to help the injured and the families of the victims. Chile is on Brazil's . . .

A. Northern border

B. Western border

C. Southern border

D. None of the above


D. Chile runs along South America's Pacific Coast and does not border Brazil.


Q: The fire at the Kiss club in the city of Santa Maria, Brazil, started when stage fireworks ignited acoustic insulation on the ceiling. It was eerily similar to a 2003 fire that killed 100 people in the smallest U.S. state . . .

A. Delaware

B. District of Columbia

C. Rhode Island

D. Wyoming


C. A band manager set off the fireworks that ignited the ceiling in the fatal blaze at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, the nation's smallest state. Delaware is the second smallest state, and Wyoming has the fewest people. The District of Columbia is much smaller than Rhode Island but has more people than Wyoming. It is not a state and has no voting representatives in Congress.


Q: Fireworks also were blamed in a 2004 nightclub fire that killed 195 people in Buenos Aires, the capital of South America's second largest nation . . .

A. Argentina

B. Brazil

C. Colombia

D. Peru


A. In Argentina's Cromanon nightclub fire, a pyrotechnic flare set off by someone in the audience ignited the foam in the ceiling. The club contained highly flammable decorations and building materials while lacking basic fire safety measures like fire extinguishers. Brazil is by far the largest nation in South America, followed by Argentina, Colombia and Peru.


Q: Many of the exit doors to Agentina's Cromanon nightclub were chained shut like the bolted exit doors in the Cocoanut Grove fire, the worst nightclub fire in U.S. history. That 1942 fire killed 492 people in New England's largest city . . .

A. New York City

B. Boston

C. Philadelphia

D. Providence


B. The owners of both Buenos Aires' Cromanon and Boston's Cocoanut Grove were sent to prison in those blazes, and public officials were blamed for not enforcing fire safety laws. Boston is the largest city in the six states that comprise New England – Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.