POLAND: Polish ministers have blamed Saturday's roof collapse on the British and Polish owners of the exhibition hall in Chorzow, near Katowice, southern Poland.
Firefighters with sniffer dogs made a final search for eight bodies believed to still lie under the hall roof that collapsed while a racing pigeon exhibition went on below.
The collapse injured hundreds and another victim died in hospital yesterday, bringing the death toll to 67.
Although the official cause of the accident is unknown, justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro appeared on television flourishing heavy chunks of ice, 8cm thick, which he said were removed from the flat roof of the aluminium-clad building.
A preliminary investigation made clear that the owners were responsible, he alleged, because "they didn't guarantee the safety of the event".
"According to experts there is no doubt that leaving such ice on a flat roof is against all standards and rules, that it is a huge threat for the people inside the building," said Mr Ziobro. "The cause of tragedy is probably that the company wanted to save money for cleaning the roof."
Even if the roof hadn't collapsed, he said that emergency doors were locked and the level of ice and snow on in broke the law and could result in prison sentences of six to eight years for the company owners.
The minister for transport and buildings, Jerzy Polaczek, agreed that the responsibility lay with the buildings owners. Krzysztof Mejer, an official in the Silesia province, now sitting on a special investigation into the accident, said: "Three times before the tragedy I sent letters to owners of these flat buildings with an appeal to remove snow from the roofs."
All around Katowice yesterday, men could be seen shovelling snow from flat-roofed buildings, while several hypermarkets elsewhere in Poland were shut until the roofs had been inspected.
Although the exhibition hall is owned by Katowice International Fair Ltd, its parent company is a joint shareholding between the local authorities and a British majority shareholder, Expomedia.
Shares in Expomedia dropped in London yesterday after unnamed government officials told Polish television that many of the large flat-roofed commercial buildings built in Poland in the last decade used designs from Spain and other countries with warmer climates and less snowfall.
The Polish company that designed the hall, SC Decorum, said yesterday the roof met Polish building regulations and could carry 70kg to 80kg of snow per square metre, far below the 250kg of snow and ice the prosecutor said was found on the roof.
Officials said that a key issue of the investigation would be to find out whether the ice was caused by the 35 degree difference in temperature inside and outside the hall.
Police said that, while the rescue effort had ceased, the search would continue until all the bodies were removed and identified.
They said 60 of the 67 dead have been identified, while there were still 15 people reported as missing.