By IPS Correspondents
ASUNCION, Aug 1 2005 (IPS)

"I saw a ball of fire and started to run, following an employee to a door, but it was locked. We ended up trapped in a bathroom. We were weak and exhausted. Then I heard a huge noise and I made it out through a hole they smashed in the wall."

Fabio Arrúa said that although he suffered no burns in the fire that destroyed the Ycuá Bolaños hypermarket in the Paraguayan capital one year ago, he spent four days in intensive care and three months in the hospital because of severe lung damage caused by smoke inhalation.

A year after the worst catastrophe in the history of this South American country, the 45-year-old fitness trainer has picked up the pieces of his life and moved on, with a new determination to "help the needy."

According to the official statistics, a total of 360 people were killed, 240 injured and 11 remain missing, while 300 survivors are still receiving medical and psychological treatment. In addition, 204 children were orphaned.

Between 700 and 800 people, mainly families with young children, were in the crowded supermarket shopping and eating lunch when the fire broke out in the food court on Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004.

Passersby testified that when they tried to enter the building to help the victims, they found the doors locked.

Orders were allegedly given to lock the exits to keep customers from fleeing with merchandise without paying.

On Monday, the head of Paraguay’s Volunteer Fire Corps, Rafael Valdez Peralta, confirmed to IPS that the doors were indeed locked. He also said the first firefighter to reach the main entryway of the burning building was threatened by an armed security guard, who warned him not to break the glass.

Organisations of survivors and relatives of the victims came together Monday to commemorate the first anniversary of the tragedy and demand the prosecution of Asunción Mayor Enrique Riera and Martín Burt, who was mayor at the time the shopping complex – which opened in December 2001 – was built.

The victims’ families and survivors began Sunday night to pay homage to those who died, with a vigil outside the ruins of the supermarket, where a shrine has been built.

Monday morning, the organisations grouped in the umbrella Ycuá Bolaños Victims’ Coordinating Committee marched through the streets of the capital to the legislature and central courthouse.

The demonstrators asked Congress not to renew Attorney General Germán Latorre’s term, because they consider him responsible for serious shortcomings in the investigations.

They also urged Supreme Court president Antonio Fretes to speed up the pace of the legal proceedings.

"We are demanding an oral public trial for those who are facing charges of closing the exits, the investigation and prosecution of mayors Burt and Riera for their irresponsibility, which led to the deaths of hundreds of people, and a preliminary hearing for the architect responsible for this death trap," said Liz Torres, a survivor who leads the Coordinating Committee, and who lost several family members and friends in the fire.

The complexity of the case led the Office of the Public Prosecutor to divide the investigation into three parts, involving the charges against the owners of the supermarket and several security guards; possible charges against the construction company that built the shopping complex; and possible charges against municipal officials who approved the blueprints and oversaw construction of the building.

The case that has progressed the farthest is the one against the supermarket owners Juan Pío Paiva and his son Daniel, three security guards accused of keeping people from fleeing the building, and six minority shareholders.

The charges they face are intentional homicide, infliction of grave injuries, and failure to assist.

After a preliminary hearing in June, Judge Meneleo Insfrán decided that an oral public trial would be held. But that has been blocked so far by an appeal by the defence.

Former prosecutor Alejandro Nissen, who represents many of the victims’ families and survivors, told IPS that several judges commented to him off the record that not until next May would the judiciary’s schedule allow an oral trial to be held, if Judge Insfrán’s decision is upheld on appeal.

Like his clients, Nissen vocally criticised prosecutor Edgar Sánchez, who is heading up the investigation. – We had a meeting with him and a number of representatives from the victims organisations, and we realised that he was totally misinformed about the cause of the fire, as well as totally unconcerned about the victims," he charged.

In the meantime, the responsibility of Bernardo, who designed and built the supermarket, is being investigated by prosecutor Olindo López.

López has also failed to call a preliminary hearing as of yet, because Ismachoviez’s defence attorney’s have appealed the charges of unsafe building practices filed against him.

The responsibility of the municipal government, meanwhile, is being investigated by prosecutor Rubén Villalba. Twelve officials are being investigated for public endangerment, while Burt and Riera could be charged with breach of trust.

However, these are the proceedings in which the least headway has been made so far, because five different prosecutors were either removed from the case or pulled out on their own account.

According to the final report completed by a group of experts from Paraguay, the United States, Brazil and Argentina who investigated the disaster, the fire started in a grill located in the food court an hour and a half before the first explosion, which took place at 11:20 a.m. local time.

It all began in an improperly constructed S-shaped duct that served as the exhaust vent for the grill. A charcoal spark ignited the grease that had accumulated due to a lack of maintenance and the fire spread between the building’s false ceiling and roof, which then caused the release of flammable gases.

The shock wave created by the first explosion broke the windows in the bakery section, and the influx of oxygen speeded up the spread of the fire, which expanded in a V-shape from the grill to the rest of the store.

The flames entered the central air conditioning system, and the nitrogen in the refrigerant caused a second explosion.

The fire then spread to the indoor garage, where a diesel-fuelled car exploded, setting off another shock wave that cut off this potential escape route.

The enormous supermarket, with a total floor space of 8,340 square metres, had been inaugurated just a year and a half before the tragedy.

Ismachoviez, a highly sought-after architect at the time, was completely in charge of its design, construction and interior decoration.

Ismachoviez maintains that Ycuá Bolaños was equipped with all the necessary security features, services and measures.

Nevertheless, the investigation revealed that not all of the security measures required had actually been taken. For example, the building did not have properly labelled emergency exits.

Moreover, it was discovered that 70 percent of the final construction did not follow the original blueprints approved by the Asunción municipal government. But it has still been impossible to confirm whether the building work was supevised by an inspector.

Luis Alberto Boh, the alderman who chairs the Physical and Urban Planning Commission on the Asunción city council and a member of the centre-right Movimiento Asunción Party, contends that the city’s shortfalls in terms of security do not stem from deficient regulations.

ôThe real problem lies with those who exercise control and how they enforce the regulations," he told IPS.

Boh, an architect and urban planner, said that the only thing the municipal government has done since the tragedy is to create more red tape with regard to regulations, ôand this undoubtedly means more corruption."

He added that the paying of bribes to escape from complying with regulations is in itself a standard practice in Asunción.

In October 2004, a campaign called Safe Asunción was launched by the city authorities, aimed at ensuring that all public buildings fully met with the safety regulations in force.

ôIt all came to nothing," said Boh. ôThe problem is not that there is no way of controlling the 30,000 buildings in the city. This is a matter of institutions that do not work. They are totally corrupt. We are going to have a lot more incidents like Ycua Bolaños," he concluded.

In the meantime, fire continues to be a major cause for fear in Paraguay, where the only professionally trained firefighting force, overseen by the National Police, provides its services at the Silvio Pettirossi International Airport.

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