LIMA, peru — A fire swept through a two-story private rehabilitation center for addicts in a poor part of Peru’s capital Saturday, killing 26 people and critically injuring six as firefighters punched holes through walls to rescue residents locked inside.
The Christ is Love center for drug and alcohol addicts was unlicensed and overcrowded, and its residents were apparently kept inside “like prisoners,” said Health Minister Alberto Tejada.
Six men rescued from the building were hospitalized in critical condition, said Peru’s fire chief, Antonio Zavala, adding that most of the victims died of asphyxiation. All the victims appeared to be male.
Police Chief Clever Zegarra said the cause of the 9 a.m. fire was under investigation.
“There has been talk of the burning of an object, of a mattress, but also of a fight that resulted in a fire. All of this is speculation,” he said. “I’ve been here at the scene from morning to evening, but for the moment, the exact cause of the fire is not known.”
One resident of the center on a narrow dead-end street in Lima’s teeming San Juan de Lurigancho district said he was eating breakfast on the second floor when he saw flames coming from the first floor, where the blaze apparently began.
Gianfranco Huerta told local RPP news radio station that he leaped from a window to safety.
“The doors were locked,” he told the station. “There was no way to get out.”
AP journalists at the scene said all the windows of the building they were able to see were barred. Journalists were not allowed inside as police cordoned off the block. By early afternoon, all the dead had been removed from the center.
Authorities said they did not know how many people were inside the center at the time of the fire. They said they were looking for the center’s owners and staff, some of whom apparently fled the scene.
Zegarra identified the owner as Raul Garcia.
Zoila Chea, 45, an aunt of one victim, said families paid Garcia $37 to treat an addicted relative and $15 a week thereafter.
She said that neighbors had constantly complained about the center and that it had been closed twice by authorities.
Chea, 45, said relatives were prohibited from seeing interned patients during the first three months of treatment, which she added consisted mainly of reading the Bible.
