whoever was the supermarket Ycua Bolañoswhere in 2004 Some 364 people died in Asunción because of a terrible fire, it reopened its doors 18 years later converted into a memorial that seeks to uproot the victims of one of the greatest tragedies in Paraguay from oblivion.
Family, friends and authorities attended this Monday as every year to pay tribute to the dead, wounded and missingbut also to celebrate life, especially of those who miraculously managed to be rescued.
With photographs, flowers or candles, mothers, children, cousins or simply acquaintances reminded supermarket workers and hundreds of shoppers that on Sunday, August 1, 2004, they were surprised by the flames.
Songs, prayers and even discussions between some of the relatives were experienced today in that place.
However, at 11:20 local time (12 in Argentina) -when it is remembered that the fateful emergency began-, the sound of the sirens of several fire trucks silenced the ecumenical act scheduled for that hour. Tears and expressions of pain took over the place.
Liz Torres tearfully hugged her little grandson. That August 1, at the age of 37, she survived with her husband. She today she is part of the Coordinator of Victims, Relatives and Friends of Ycuá Bolaños.
“The only thing we think about is running,” he told Efe, recalling how the sound of some bottles falling from a gondola was the prelude to an explosion that was followed by a wave of fire that traveled from north to south across the roof of the patio. Of foods.
The fire in the supermarket, located in the Trinidad neighborhood of Asunción, originated in the grill of a restaurant in the establishment, due to lack of maintenance, according to the investigation of the case.
The same expertise showed that the owner of the supermarket, Juan Pío Paiva, ordered that the doors of the establishment be closed as soon as the fire was declared to prevent theft.
Torres was trapped along with some 500 people, including those trying to flee the flames and a human wall that formed in front of the closed exit.
“I thought we were too young to die, because my husband is 2 years older than me,” added this woman, for whom the anguish was greater when remembering her children, then 12 and 14 years old and who did not go to the supermarket that day. .
“I am the life of others, I am the life of those who covered my body at that time,” said Torres.
For her, the memorial inaugurated after 5 years from the start of its construction it is a “minimal” conquest, it is a community space that will not allow the victims to remain only in numbers or statistics.
Also this Monday, Martina Ibarrola attended the ceremony, who lost her daughter, Liliana Beatriz Rodríguez, then 24 years old and a supermarket cashier.
Hugging her portrait, she greeted, hugged several of the attendees and recalled, very hurt, that her daughter’s death occurred on the same day as the ninth anniversary of her husband’s death.
“I had to remove my husband’s entire altar to put her at home,” she recalls.
“It seems that I buried my daughter yesterday,” he confessed, while reviewing with his story the anguished search he undertook, first among the wounded and finally among the deceased, before confirming his greatest fear.
And along with the attendees, including a young woman who at just 5 years old was left without her father and uncle who came to buy the ingredients for what would be a family barbecue, was Liduvino Escurra.
He, then 23 years old, was one of the first firefighters to fight the fire. After this time, he realizes that his daughter was 3 months old at that time and that she could have been among the victims.
“You have to value life a little bit. Be that as it may, the family always comes first. It would not be bad to hug your family every day,” advises this stocky man who was left speechless when remembering the teaching left by a fire of which the coroners managed to identify 364 deceased, although some calculations raise the dead to up to 400.