Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Ben Henderson.

Today I'm taking you back to Paraguay on the 1st of August 2004

when a supermarket called Iquanaus caught fire.

It's seen as the country's worst peacetime disaster. They started off with a huge explosion that came from the restaurant area and then the roof started burning and falling down. And people are running in all directions,

including me and my neighbor.

This is Tatiana Garbaglio. She was seven years old at the time. She visited the store that day with a friend and her friend's mother. I remember it was a warm and pleasant warning and my neighbor asked her mom if we could accompany her to the supermarket.

So my mom wasn't too keen on me going because she had a kind of a bad feeling about it,

as mothers often do, but in the end I decided to go.

And it was when we were paying that the fire broke out.

The explosion hit the shopping center at its busiest, the possible cause a

spark igniting a gas canister. The fire ripped through the three-story complex,

one floor collapsed, crashing cars below, causing

pandemonium.

When we're running, I fell over near the door that led out into the car park and my friend fell over to.

And that's when I heard people start to shout.

Open the doors, open the doors we don people start to shout.

Open the doors, we don't want to die.

And that's when all hell broke out.

And as the death toll keeps climbing, the full horror is sinking in. Many might not have

perished if they haven't been trapped inside. According to several witnesses, security guards locked the exit doors to stop shoppers leaving without paying,

even though the owners strenuously deny it.

I was lying on the floor and I had no feeling in my right leg. I actually thought that someone really heavy had fallen on top of my leg.

...