11 killed after church roof collapses Sunday in Mexico
CIUDAD MADERO, Mexico — The collapse of a church roof during a service in northern Mexico has killed at least 11 people and injured 60, and searchers said Monday that no further people were believed to be trapped in the wreckage.
State police had initially estimated about 100 people were inside the church in the Gulf coast city of Ciudad Madero when it collapsed during a baptism Sunday, and said that approximately 30 parishioners may have been trapped in the rubble when the roof caved in.
But Tamaulipas state Gov. Américo Villarreal later said only 70 were believed to have been inside. That represented a kind of miracle in itself; a parish priest said that just minutes before, a Sunday mass attended by as many as 300 people had just ended and people had exited the church moments before the collapse.
Mr. Villarreal said that, after sending search dogs and thermal imaging cameras under the collapsed concrete slab, it appeared that nobody was still trapped, apart from the ten bodies already recovered.
“The most likely thing, I can’t affirm it 100%, is that there aren’t any more people trapped,” Mr. Villarreal said. Describing the searches by dogs and rescue teams, he said “there are no indications of life inside the collapsed area.”
That optimism will be put to the test when cranes start lifting chunks of the collapsed slab off the floor and the tops of pews. The state civil defense office said that the search and rescue stage of the operation had ended Monday morning.
The state security spokesman’s office said early Monday that 23 of the 60 injured remain hospitalized, with two in serious condition.
The collapse occurred Sunday at the Santa Cruz church in the Gulf coast city of Ciudad Madero, next to the port city of Tampico, just as a mass baptism was being held.
Three of the dead were children, and on the list of people who had been injured were a 4-month-old baby, three 5-year-olds and two 9year-olds.
“Unfortunately, the elderly and children were those who suffered the most, the ones who were most trapped, the ones who suffered the most deaths, I think,” said Rev. Pablo Galván, a priest who was just outside in the church parking lot Sunday when the collapse occurred. He had just finished celebrating the main mass.
Describing that moment, Rev. Galván said “the roof just simply and plainly collapsed, like an implosion, like when you crush a can.”
“It fell, there was no time to do anything. It was like two seconds. We still can’t understand what happened,” Rev. Galván said.
Questions immediately turned to why the concrete and brick structure failed so suddenly. Security camera footage from about a block away showed the unusual, gabled roof simply collapsed downward. The walls did not appear to have been blown outward, nor was there any indication of an explosion, or anything other than simple structural failure.