PARAGUAY: Tragic Fire Denudes Layers of Negligence

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alejandro Sciscioli

ASUNCION, Aug 2 2004 (IPS) - An explosive mix of negligence, corruption, lack of enforcement of safety regulations in construction, an alleged order by the store owners to lock the doors, and a severely under-funded corps of fire-fighters led to the death of more than 300 people in a supermarket in the Paraguayan capital.

But Sunday’s tragic accident, the worst catastrophe in decades in this South American country of nearly six million, might have been avoided or swiftly controlled if municipal statute 25,097 – which regulates aspects involving fire prevention – had been respected, city councillor Luis Alberto Boh, chairman of the Asunción city council’s Physical and Town Planning Commission, told IPS.

Boh, an architect and city planner, said the 214-clause 1988 statute ”is lengthy, detailed, meticulous and so strict it is even difficult to live up to.”

The city councillor, a member of the centre-right independent Movimiento Asunción party, blames the accident on the city government.

For buildings like the multilevel supermarket, the statute requires the prior approval of blueprints, a complete inspection of the building when work has been completed, periodic inspections of the installations, and finally, training of the employees in how to handle emergencies.

”It would not be strange if in this case the inspections had not taken place,” because it is a common practice for the municipal inspectors to carry out only cursory inspections or even skip them completely if they receive bribes, he said.

Corruption ”is an endemic evil in Paraguay, so there are no safety guarantees in the construction of buildings where large numbers of people gather,” Boh added.

The city councillor also complained that Asunción authorities failed to react to the disaster, because Mayor Enrique Riera of the governing Colorado Party was on an unauthorised trip abroad.

According to Bernardo Ismachoviez, who was in charge of the interior design and construction of the Ykuá Bolaños supermarket, where the blaze broke out, the locale was built in accordance with the requisite safety measures.

The 8,000-square-metre supermarket, which opened in December 2001, had a covered parking lot for 350 cars, and around 100 employees on its payroll.

Judicial sources estimate that between 700 and 800 people were in the supermarket shopping and having lunch when the fire broke out, after two loud explosions.

The first blast may have been the result of a gas leak in the food court or bakery section. The second, after the flames spread, occurred when a car blew up in the underground parking lot.

The supermarket, which is located in the lower-middle-class neighbourhood of Trinidad, four km north of the city’s historic centre, quickly turned into an inferno.

Around 40 witnesses testified Monday before the office of the public prosecutor that when they tried to enter the supermarket to help the victims, they found the doors locked.

Rafael Valdez Peralta, the president of Paraguay’s volunteer fire-fighters corps, confirmed to IPS that the doors were indeed locked and said the first fire-fighter to reach the main entryway was threatened by an armed security guard, who ordered him not to break the door’s glass panel.

The supermarket owners, Juan Pío Paiva and his son Daniel, were arrested on intentional homicide charges on the order of prosecutor Teresa Sosa. They allegedly gave instructions to lock the doors to keep customers from fleeing without paying after an anti-theft alarm went off.

The lack of enforcement of anti-fire safety measures and the decision to lock the doors as the flames were spreading were compounded by the severe lack of funding of the fire-fighters corps.

It took more than an hour to get the only source of water available working.

The only professional fire-fighters in Paraguay, who belong to the National Police force, work in the Silvio Pettirossi international airport, Valdez Peralta told IPS.

”The capacity of the National Police fire-fighters to put out fires shrank due to budget problems, and their work gradually fell to us,” he said.

Valdez Peralta concurred with Boh with respect to the safety violations in most of the country’s buildings. ”The only companies that respect the laws and regulations are the multinational corporations and some top-level national firms, which have ISO quality certification,” he added.

Donations and humanitarian aid have poured in from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, among other countries.

The government created a National Emergencies Commission in the Interior Ministry to channel the aid, and a National Medical Emergencies Commission in the Health Ministry.

At noon on Monday, the fire-fighters’ work at the site of the blaze was suspended, and a team of Paraguayan, Brazilian and U.S. experts will begin to analyse the disaster site on Tuesday.

The Interior Ministry reported 318 dead and 262 injured, including 61 in critical condition.

Similar catastrophes have occurred in other Latin American countries, generally linked to a lack of enforcement of safety standards, negligence or lack of emergency prevention and response plans.

On Sep. 26, 1999, 62 people died and 348 were injured in the city of Celaya in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, when a clandestine fireworks factory blew up.

On Dec. 30, 2001, 300 people were killed, 200 were injured and 40 remain missing after a fire broke out in downtown Peru, after fireworks exploded in a crowded shopping district.

And on May 17 this year, 104 prisoners died in a blaze in the prison of San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras. )