At least 256 people were killed after a propane gas tank exploded inside a crowded supermarket here, igniting a fast-moving fire that left Sunday shoppers trapped behind doors that might have been locked to prevent looting.
Witnesses said the explosion occurred about noon in a basement food-court kitchen where families had gathered for lunch in the modern, mall-sized market.
Officials said that many bodies were yet to be recovered and that the death toll could surpass 300, making the blaze among the deadliest in recent South American history.
Public Health Minister Julio Cesar Velazquez described a gruesome scene at the Ycua Bolanos supermarket and at a temporary morgue set up in the parking lot of a neighboring nightclub.
“I saw children, pregnant women, senior citizens and young people,” Velazquez said. “It’s horrific.”
Officials said that rescue efforts were hampered by fears that the cube-shaped building, which occupies much of a city block, might collapse. Thick plumes of black and gray smoke poured from the roof for hours after the person believed to be the last survivor was rescued.
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Local television network Telefuturo reported that after some shoppers on the floors above the fire took advantage of the initial confusion to steal, one or several managers or security guards sealed some exits
Julio Gimenez, an attorney for the market’s owners, denied the charge.
“Nothing was closed,” Gimenez said. “Everyone who could escape this unfortunate event did.”
But witnesses described neighbors scrambling to break open locked doors to allow those inside to escape.
“A group of us went to break all these windows with rocks,” one man told Telefuturo, pointing to street-level glass doors pockmarked with holes. “We got a lot of people out that way.”
Rodolfo Rodriguez, a television cameraman, arrived just as the first fire crews did.
“I could see people on the floor who were already asphyxiated and burned,” he said. “They were being stepped on by the people trying to get away.”
Daniel Paiva, one of the owners of the complex, granted a television interview moments after escaping the burning building.
“It was so fast,” he said of the fire. “Everything happened in a few minutes.”
Paiva, too, said no doors were locked.
Later Sunday, Paraguayan authorities detained him for investigation of charges of “culpable homicide.” Authorities would not reveal where he was held because they feared he might be attacked by relatives of the victims.
Asuncion’s fire department, which is composed of volunteers, seemed ill-prepared for the magnitude of the blaze. Paraguayan media made a public call for donations of medical supplies and said cell phones were needed to help coordinate the effort.
Officials from the U.S. Embassy brought a generator to the scene as darkness fell Sunday.
Firefighters took many of the dead to the temporary morgue at the nearby nightclub, where reporters counted about 111 bodies lined up in a parking lot Sunday afternoon, many burned beyond recognition. The dead included a baby.
Dozens of bodies were clustered in the basement food court, officials said. Firefighter Jose Antonio Recalde said he and his colleagues had seen as many as 100 bodies still inside the building nine hours after the blaze was reported.
Survivors told Recalde they ran through the complex searching for a way out. Some knocked down the market’s brick walls.
Officials said at least one of the upper floors in the three-story building had buckled and collapsed in the heat of the fire, trapping and killing many underneath.
Paraguayan television broadcast images of soot-covered survivors being rushed from the building. Hours later, the scene was one of chaos, with rescue workers, doctors, police and family members all trying to press closer to the building.
Among the officials arriving at the scene was Paraguay’s president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos.
“At this moment of great pain, I came to tend to the wounded and the families of the dead,” Duarte said.