The Cidade do Samba fire
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 2011
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In the early hours of 7 February 2011, less than a month before Carnival, a fire destroyed three workshops at the Cidade do Samba in Rio de Janeiro, belonging to the Grande Rio, Portela and União da Ilha samba schools. Floats, costumes and a year of work were lost within a few hours.
The three schools paraded anyway, outside the competition, with material rebuilt in a rush and donations from their rivals. Forensic experts pointed to an electrical fault as the most likely cause. No one was convicted of a crime.
Sources
In the game
Ashes on the Avenue
Cidade do Samba, Rio de Janeiro, 3:10 am on Carnival Saturday. The opening float of Estrela da Gamboa, a twelve-meter golden phoenix, caught fire inside the workshop.
The game borrows the setting: samba school workshops destroyed days before the parade. The embezzlement plot and the arsonist are fiction.
