Fireworks kill 24 near Mexico City
TULTEPEC: Twenty-four people were killed and at least 49 injured on Thursday when a series of explosions ripped through fireworks workshops in a town just north of Mexico City, according to officials.
The dead included at least four firefighters and two police officers who rushed to the scene after the first explosion, only to be killed by a subsequent wave of blasts.
Video shot from a nearby highway showed a massive plume of smoke rising from the area of the explosions in the town of Tultepec. Wrecked buildings and scorched ground covered a rural patch of modest homes and small farm plots. Authorities said four small buildings were destroyed.
The government of the State of Mexico said in a statement that eight people from Tultepec were killed, along with the six emergency personnel and two others who have not yet been identified. The state government later raised the death toll to 24, but did not specify who the other victims were in a statement posted to its official Twitter account.
The first explosion occurred at 9.40am (local time). First responders and local residents rushed to the scene to help rescue people. At 10am, three more powerful explosions occurred, killing some of those who had come to help, the government statement said.
Firefighters, local and state police and civil defence workers were among those injured, the statement said.
Mexico State civil defence said 17 people died at the scene and seven died later at hospitals.
Helicopters took the wounded to several local hospitals, and more than 300 police were dispatched to the scene.
Luis Felipe Puente, head of Mexico’s civil defence agency, said there were four blasts in total and the explosions started at an unauthorised, clandestine workshop and spread as flammable material shot into the air. He said the dead also apparently included one minor and a civil defence worker.
“The problem was that after the first explosion, people went running to help, and when the second explosion occurred, these people who ran to help were killed,” Mr Puente told the Milenio news network.
Many residents in the town make a living by fabricating and selling homemade fireworks, and explosions are a regular occurrence.
But authorities have been unable to enforce safety regulations and registration requirements.
“We cannot continue to allow this kind of situation,” Mr Puente said.