Police forensic officers have begun investigating the deadly collapse of a grandstand that took place late on Sunday at the Fonte Nova Stadium, in Salvador, capital of northern Brazil's State Bahia, state governor Jacques Wagner said on Monday.

 

Wagner ordered the closure of the stadium, the city's largest, and published a report by the National Architectural and Engineering Company Syndicate (SNEAI) which described it as the worst of Brazil's 29 major stadiums.

 

The SNEAI, who surveyed the nation's stadiums after Brazil had been awarded the right to host the 2014 World Cup, described Fonte Nova as being in "a deplorable state", lacking maintenance and "offering neither security or comfort to its users".

 

Seven people died and five more were injured on Sunday at the stadium, when an overcrowded grandstand collapsed after a game. Some 60,000 fans had crowded the stand to watch a game that promoted home team Bahia into the football-mad nation's top league. The accident created panic among the other fans, who stampeded for the exits, injuring a further 40 people, one of whom is in a critical state.

 

Raul Barreto Filho, director of Bahia's Technical Police, told media separately that one theory his staff are considering is that the grandstand was simply worn out.

 

Sunday's accident, is the deadliest in Brazil's footballing history, and the second multiple fatality in the stadium's history. In 1971 four people died when fans began fighting in the stands.

 

Brazil's previous deadliest accident took place at the 1992 Brazilian League final, when the fence separating a higher stand from a lower area collapsed in Rio's Maracana Stadium. As the fence gave, approximately 20 fans fell, and three died.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 27, 2007)