PERU: Fire Blamed on Corruption and Negligence

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Abraham Lama

LIMA, Jan 3 2002 (IPS) - Authorities in Peru are studying formulas for reforming the chaotic informal commerce in the centre of the Peruvian capital, while possible negligence and corruption are being investigated as the underlying causes of a fire that claimed at least 292 lives and left 919 missing.

Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliossi, whose head could be the first to roll as a consequence of the fire, announced Wednesday that the buildings destroyed late Saturday by flames and explosions of tons of fireworks stockpiled for the holiday sales season would be torn down.

But there is still uncertainty regarding the fate of “Mesa Redonda”, a busy six-block area of shopping galleries and run- down apartment buildings that emerged spontaneously in downtown Lima in the 1980s.

A few years ago, authorities unsuccessfully attempted to eradicate the unsafe informal shopping district, which, however, remained in place, with decrepit apartment and office buildings turned into galleries full of tiny shops.

Mesa Redonda, located 300 metres from Congress and 800 metres from the government palace, is an area packed with tens of thousands of stands and tiny shops selling cheap imported goods from China, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.

Most of the household goods, clothing and other items marketed by the unlicenced vendors in Mesa Redonda are sold by the dozen, the “wholesale measure” used by street vendors in Peru.

In the weeks before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, most stands and shops in Mesa Redonda sell fireworks and toys.

The death toll was so high due to the tons of fireworks warehoused in the shopping district and the dilapidated infrastructure in that central area of Lima, whose run-down five- floor galleries and streets crowded with stands make a quick evacuation impossible.

In addition, the disaster struck at a peak shopping hour, when the streets and buildings were full of shoppers.

Authorities presume that the fire broke out when someone set off a firecracker in the street to test it, which triggered a chain reaction of explosions of fireworks stockpiled by merchants in stores and warehouses.

The area quickly became a blazing inferno, with temperatures peaking at between 600 and 1,000 degrees celsius.

Rospigliossi is ultimately responsible for the fact that an office answering to his ministry, in charge of authorising the importation of explosives and weapons, permitted the purchase of 1,100 tons of fireworks from China last year.

Christian Democratic legislator Antero Flores Araoz, an opposition lawmaker, explained that after a fire claimed eight lives in 1995, a law was passed that banned imports and sales of fireworks.

However, the law did not put an end to the centuries-old custom in Peru of celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve by setting off fireworks and firecrackers, and the resultant high demand to which informal vendors and neighbourhood street markets cater.

“The city government of Lima and the Interior Ministry failed to enforce the law,” complained Flores Araos.

On the contrary, he said, “ministerial authorities created regulations running counter to the ban, authorising firecrackers that supposedly do not ‘explode’; the city government did not ban their sales: and the police did not enforce the law,” he added.

However, Lima Mayor Alberto Andrade said sales of firecrackers had been prohibited in central Lima.

Andrade said importers had violated their promise to sell fireworks in two areas assigned for that purpose outside of the city centre, and that the police failed to provide protection to agents who attempted to stage raids.

“Our municipal agents are not armed, and they were attacked by crowds of people with sticks, who kept them from confiscating the firecrackers, while the police withdrew, refusing us protection,” complained city councillor Gabriela Adrianzen, director of the office of oversight of trade.

Meanwhile, businessman Ricardo Wong, considered the biggest importer of Chinese fireworks, denied that he had used military trucks to transport his merchandise, with no obstacles put in his way by municipal authorities, from the customs office to his warehouses in downtown Lima.

Wong is also accused of bribing police to allow him to stockpile firecrackers, which were piled in the streets in front of the doors of Mesa Redonda wholesale businesses.

So far, less than 100 of the 292 charred and asphyxiated bodies pulled out of the area by firefighters have been identified, because many of the victims were burnt beyond recognition. The bodies of more than half of the missing are believed to remain under the smoking rubble.

Authorities reported Wednesday that they would bury the bodies, even the ones not yet identified, “because the Lima morgue does not have the freezer capacity for so many cadavers.”

They promised, however, to exhume the unidentified corpses and carry out DNA exams.

Official sources said that Andrade, Rospigliossi, a representative of the ministry of the presidency, several government experts and the owners of the seven shopping galleries that were burnt in the fire have been meeting since Tuesday.

On Wednesday, around 700 owners of stores located in the six- block Mesa Redonda area were trying to shove through the police cordon to reach their shops, to protect whatever remained of their merchandise.

In the meantime, demonstrating the vitality that characterises informal commerce, the survivors of the tragedy, nearly half of the 2,000 street vendors who worked in Mesa Redonda, have set up stands in surrounding streets, trying to catch the eye of the sparse crowds, who showed more curiosity than a real intention to buy.