Fire Wrecks Old Lisbon Shopping District

A fire today destroyed much of Lisbon’s historic shopping district, killed one person and injured 29 before firemen brought it under control 10 hours after it began in a 19th-Century department store.

Maj. Anibal Matos Silveira, the official coordinating more than 800 firemen at the scene, said the Chiado shopping district will “continue to smolder” for another day.

President Mario Soares, who toured the 10-square-block area four hours after the fire broke out in the Armazens do Grandela department store on the Rua do Carmo pedestrian mall, said one man was killed.

Spokeswoman Ersilia Soares at San Jose Hospital said 29 people were being treated for burns and smoke inhalation, and six were in serious condition.

The Portuguese news agency LUSA said the fire was Lisbon’s worst disaster since a fire and an earthquake destroyed much of the city in 1755.

The fire also destroyed Grandes Armazens do Chiado, Lisbon’s other department store, and numerous specialty shops that had been a fixture of Lisbon’s commercial life for the past 150 years.

The Grandela and Chiado department stores were among the oldest in Western Europe with wooden floors and stairways and old-fashioned booths for cashiers. They had no sprinkler systems.

Silveira said the shells of the burned-out, five- and six-story buildings on Rua do Carmo, Rua Garrett, Rua Nova do Almada and Rua Sacramento may collapse.

Officials said they do not know what caused the blaze, which began around 5 a.m., but Lisbon residents were awakened by explosions of bottled gas in the stores.

Officials at the scene said hundreds of people were left homeless by the fire and that “at least 2,000” are out of jobs.