A sudden explosion of flames in a crowded bar sends revelers panicking toward a single, narrow exit. The thick, toxic smoke suffocates them. The bodies of those who have succumbed block the escape of those who have not.

These horrific scenes occurred not only at the Rong Beer Na Ladprao pub in Bangkok last Sunday night, where 32 people are now known to have died, but also at another nightclub called Mountain B four years ago in the coastal town of Sattahip.

Twenty-six people died in that inferno, which bears a striking similarity to the recent one in Bangkok.

Both fires are similar to one at a New Year’s celebration at Bangkok’s Santika Club in 2009, in which 67 people died. After each of these tragedies, there were calls to learn lessons to prevent them from happening again.

One of them, after the Mountain B fire, was carried out by Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai of the Asian Institute of Technology. Now you find yourself repeating the same warnings.

“Although the fire in these three incidents occurred in different locations, at different times, and may have had different causes, the pattern was very similar: multiple deaths in a crowded building, fire spreading rapidly either in the stage area or on the ceiling, thick smoke that cut off visibility and prevented people from finding exits, and people who died from toxic inhalation, not directly from the fire.”

He believes the fire may have been started by an electrical fault and spread through flammable material used as sound insulation.

The terrifying jets of flame seen roaring into the street through the main entrance were probably attracted by new sources of oxygen once it was opened to let people out.

That intense fire around the entrance may have forced some customers to the back of the pub, where the two exits were reportedly partially blocked and would have been difficult to find once the power went out.

Many of the dead were found there.