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A MASSIVE EXPLOSION gutted Mexico’s biggest fireworks market on last night, killing at least 31 people and injuring 72, the authorities said.
The conflagration in the Mexico City suburb of Tultepec set off a quick-fire series of multicolored blasts that sent a vast cloud of smoke billowing over the capital.
The market had been packed with customers buying pyrotechnics for traditional end-of-year festivities. Christmas and New Year parties in many Latin American countries often wrap up with clattering firework blasts.
“You just heard the blast. And everything started to be on fire. People came running out on fire,” Walter Garduno said.
“People were alight — children,” he added before trailing off.
From a few kilometres away, the multiple explosions that started at 2.50pm (9.50pm Irish time) almost looked festive, alight in blue, red and white. They were anything but.
Of the 31 confirmed dead, “26 (died) at the scene and five in hospitals,” local media reported Mexico’s chief prosecutor Milenio Alejandro Gomez as saying.
Forensic experts are working on genetic analyses of the bodies because “almost all of them are impossible” to identify, Mexico state’s governor Eruviel Avila told the Televisa television network.
At least 72 were wounded, the authorities said. The injured were transported to emergency rooms, and 21 have since been released.
Fire crews struggled for three hours before bringing the blaze under control.
Entire market blown up
The head of the civil protection service, Luis Felipe Puente, said crews had to wait for all the fireworks to finish exploding before they could extinguish the flames.
“The entire market is gone,” he said. It had 300 stands.
Several of the injured were in “delicate condition,” he added, saying searches were under way for more casualties in the scorched area that looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic film, with little left standing in the smoldering ruins.
Homes and vehicles nearby were also severely damaged. In some areas, emergency workers were gently probing for survivors under heaps of charred and twisted roofing material.
People desperately searching for family and friends shouted and gestured to rescuers about where they hoped the missing might be found.
Most of those picked up by rescuers suffered severe burns, many over their entire bodies.
The military, which is in charge of issuing fireworks sales permits, was deployed to help emergency crews transport casualties to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter.
Ambulances, fire trucks, police vehicles and army trucks all crowded the sprawling blast area.
Everything shook
Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted his condolences to the families of those killed and his wishes for the injured to recover.
The Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into the cause of the conflagration, which was prompted by “six pyrotechnic explosions,” it said in a statement.
Some speculated the mishandling of gunpowder or other fireworks components may have set them off.
That was the cause of an explosion in September 2005 at another fireworks market set up ahead of the Independence Day holiday. That market was destroyed.
The following year, another explosion destroyed more than 200 sellers’ stands. Both incidents left dozens of injured, but no fatalities.
Alejandra Pretel, a resident in Tultepec, told AFP that she didn’t realize at first that the explosions were coming from the large fireworks market.
“We thought it was a nearby fireworks workshop,” she said.
Minutes later, it became evident the market was being destroyed.
“My neighbors said they felt everything shake,” she said, “but I didn’t realize because I was running away.”
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Setting up a transformation office? How many gardai have been allocated to this? Setting up a fancy shmancy office isn’t going to make a difference to the ordinary copper out there, who works 6 ten hour shifts back to back, who have no funding, have shoddy equipment, who deal with signing a hundred passport forms a day, telling someone their relative has just died, dealing with members of the public who all think the function of the gardai is to wave a magic wand and everything will be grand, confronting violent and sometimes armed individuals who have no regard for person or property and wouldn’t hesitate in killing a garda.. The list goes on. What’s needed is about 5,000 more gardai to deal with just the everyday things. Taking calls, responding to said calls, not to be telling the public “we’ve no car today because they’re in court, so we’ll get to your burgled house in about 5 hours “, proper allocation of time to investigate crimes. Oh and they also need a management that give a sh*t about them.
Amen to that MrsWoman.
Not the job it used to be, low pay = low interest in the job, no matter what industry.
Transformation office? When I read that I thought Kathryn Thomas was going to be weighing some fat coppers once a week while Karl Henry tried his best to give out to them.
Combatting the scourge of the breakfast roll.
A transformation office? Now that’s the best one I’ve heard yet
Hhmm . We will see about this ” reform” ? No confidence in the Governments ” security guards”.
Total waffle. G in Garda now stands for girlie.
Hillarious. Did you come up with that all by yourself?
Wonder will it make any difference to a force that has the tradition of what we have seen over the years? Not very hopeful
What tradition is that?….
And P in Peter now stands for Tool
Reserves badly managed, very unfair on all involved. Should be an asset but set up so badly it will not work, a pity many with good intentions but no guidance.
I wonder did they call it Operation Transformation
The transformation office is charged with……
Blocking reform, maintaining illegal gardai perks and practises, insuring that all investigations of garda wrong doing is suppressed. Naturally a lot of middle ranking gardai will be of the streets to staff the office. Ahhhh the smell of quango and corruption permeates the FG/LAB junta.
Is Mik The Pink now directing which way the Garda Siochana should be run
Thats soooo soooo reassuring.
A “transformation office” are we guna hav pre-op & post-op shicaloni now?
Mrswoman, could the 5,000 extra gardai needed be filled with garda reservists? Could they help out walk the beat, sign passports etc etc? Free up time
@Shelly. Are there even 5000 reserves? They don’t have full powers. They don’t work (as reserves) everyday… They don’t get paid. Not worth a damn.
Another sign of the Gardai being run by bean counters and desk jockeys of many varieties. Policing is not a business, you can’t run it like a business. Jobs for the boys in nice safe offices, people with useless management degrees telling actual police officers what to do. No regard for what is actually needed – more actual Gardai – not reserves – and not politically correct yes men & women. More shite “reform” from the “New” Commissioner – sure she’s a new broom blah blah blah
fas is now solas, what a difference.
I just think they (reservists) should be allowed to do the more mundane jobs and your time could be freed up to do proper policing. They could be rostered to get more involved on the days they work. That’s all
@Shelly, as far as I know the reserves accompany gardai to calls, help out in the station etc. But you might see a reserve once every three or four weeks…. They should concentrate on getting more Gardai out there, the force is crying out for not hundreds, but thousands.
Transformation me Asre!!! Are we really gonna see a transformation in gardai cancelling penalty points for themselves? their buddies and judges. Are we really gonna see a stop to murdering the spirits of well meaning and honourable whistleblowers? are we really gonna see a transformation in gardai being the private security thugs for government and Irish Water and Shell? Are we really gonna see a transformation in gardai fabricating evidence in pursuit of innocent or guilty parties? Are we really gonna see a transformation of their current ‘inability’ to pursue corrupt politicians, clergy, bankers and elite generally? Are we gonna see a transformation of the majority of PC plodders being silent about the behaviour of the minority of gardai? Not bloody likely….
fantastic by the government yet again. i can’t wait for FGs second term :)
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