Latest News #289– Paraguay
October 14, 2004

Finnish Bible Society pledges $10,000 to comfort victims of
Paraguay shopping centre blaze

The fire tore through the crowded three-storey shopping centre in the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, at lunchtime on Sunday, August 1. The final count put the number of dead at 450 and at least 300 more were injured.

The disaster was variously attributed to a chimney over a restaurant grill where grease and charcoal remains had built up and to a gas leak. As the shopping centre turned into an inferno, one floor collapsed crushing cars below in which people were burnt alive.

Shortly afterwards, survivors claimed that security staff had locked the doors to prevent people from leaving without paying. Arising from the allegations, the owners of the centre and four security staff later faced charges of manslaughter.

Paraguay's President Nicanor Duarte, who visited the scene of the disaster, accused builders of cutting corners in the construction of the complex and suggested that inspectors had been bribed to overlook the enforcement of regulations concerning emergency exits and fire extinguishers.

Emergency services and hospitals in Asunción were overwhelmed by the disaster and experts from Argentina, Brazil and Chile assisted in the difficult task of identifying the dead.

The government declared three days of national mourning and the Paraguayan Bible Society, which quickly started distributing New Testaments and Selections to church pastors, described the disaster as the biggest tragedy that Paraguay had experienced since the Chaco war with Bolivia of 1932-35.

The Bible Society's proposal majors on providing people bereaved, injured or traumatised by the fire with the message of comfort in the Scriptures.

Volunteers will visit and talk to some 25,000 adults, sick children and grieving relatives, leaving them with appropriate biblical Selections. They will also distribute 8,000 copies of the Portion entitled Comfort for the Suffering.

Doctors, nurses and volunteer firemen who rescued or cared for the injured will also receive Selections.

The pledge from Finland will also go towards the training of some 200 volunteers who will visit the sick. Those carrying out the distribution will include hospital chaplains, volunteers from evangelical churches, the local Roman Catholic church to Trinidad, the district in Asunción where the shopping centre stood, Christian nurses and Bible Society staff and supporters.