A fierce şiddetli fire ripped paramparça etmek through Rio de Janeiro's "Samba City" Monday,destroying mahvetmek the costumes and floats festival arabası of at least en az three of the city's biggest samba schools weeks before the country's annual yıllık Carnival festivities.

The fire, which caused an estimated tahmini 10 million reais ($5.95 million) of damage, appeared to send the dreams of thousands of the city's dancers, designers and musicians up in smoke. Many had spent close yakın to a year preparing for the two-day parade geçit.

"I'm in a state durum of shock. The the penny hasn't dropped yet jeton düşmedi," a school's artistic director, Cahe Rodrigues, told the Guardian. He said the fire destroyed 98 percent of Grand Rio's floats and costumes.

"Our school was gearing up vites büyütmek up to win Carnival and I don't know if in 29 days we can put on a spectacle görünüş on the same level as we had hoped. It's all burned, all destroyed."

The president of a school called Uniao da Ilha broke down on the news show “Good Morning Brazil” today, saying the effort to stage a parade must now “start from zero,” reported GlobalPost's senior correspondent muhabir in Brazil, Erik German

“It’s unfortunate,” the school president said, “But let us never lose our joy keyif.”

Samba schools are more like massive production companies than schools and they spend the year building parade floats,sewing dikiş dikmek elaborate özenli costumes and choreographing huge performances that become the image simge of Carnival seen around the world, reports German.

The fire, which investigators dedektif suspect kuşkulanmak was an accident kaza, began around civarında 7 a.m. and lasted baki olmak for hours. There were no initial baş reports of serious ağır injuries incinme, yaralanma or deaths ölüm.

The fire appears to have virtually neredeyse destroyed the work of three of the city's 12 biggest samba schools, and it is not clear how they will manage to compete yarışmak in March's competition.

nonetheless yine de, Rio's Carnival 2011 and its informal resmi olmayan parades around the city as well as street parties will surely (z.) elbette go on devam etmek.

“The fire burned everything,” president of Academicos do Grande Rio, Helio de Oliveira, told The New York Times, “but it didn’t burn our Carnival spirit ruh.”