Seven people died on Monday, including two children, when a fire broke out in an apartment building in the north coast city of Chiclayo.
The fire started on the roof, which was being used as storage for foam to make mattresses. The residential building also housed a mattress workshop on the ground floor, although the building did not have a permit for storage or industrial use.
A two-year-old child was rescued by firefighters and taken to hospital. The owner of the building and workshop was absent when the fire broke out in the early evening. His wife was among the victims.
In Lima, Firefighters Continue to Cool Building
Meanwhile, irregular operations and permits were also a crucial part of a fire in the industrial area of downtown Lima, where firefighters continued to hose down embers in the Las Malvinas building five days after a fire broke out. The concrete structure was used mainly for storage and sales of hardware and electrical supplies, but most of the roof also included up to four stories of metal container-like structures that were used also for storage and as workshops.
Four people died in the fire, three of whom were locked in one the containers during their work shift. Firefighters were unable to reach the containers because of the heat and flames throughout the building. Some of the metal structures buckled under the heat.
Owners and operators of the commercial building and workshops are under investigation, but the Lima municipality, civil defence offices and the Ministry of Labor are also being questioned regarding the irregular structures, operating permits and labor conditions.
All the businesses in Las Malvinas had recently had their operating licenses renewed by the city authorities allegedly without any inspections and by paying bribes, according to a video recording taken in the office of the president of the commercial federation operating the building.
