President’s pledge as illegal storing of fireworks probed after deadly blasts
PRESIDENT Enrique Pena Nieto has pledged to help rebuild a Mexican fireworks market where explosions killed at least 35 people and reopen it next year.
The promise came after he visited the injured in a hospital near Tultepec, in Mexico State, where chain-reaction blasts destroyed the country’s best-known fireworks market on Tuesday, while a Roman Catholic church held funeral Masses throughout the day.
Investigators have still not announced the cause of the tragedy, which was the third explosion at the market since 2005 and cast a pall over Mexico’s Christmas season.
Mr Pena Nieto visited the injured in a hospital near Tultepec. But it was later at an anniversary ceremony for one of Mexico’s independence heroes that the president spoke about the future of the San Pablito fireworks market.
“We commit to support all of the artisans, the 300 vendors from this market, to recover or to support them so that they can restart their normal activities next year and we can achieve the reconstruction of that market,” he said.
Vendors have said that while they recognise the dangers of the fireworks market, it is their only way to make a living and they would return to work there.
Safety measures were put in place after the previous two explosions at the market but were apparently ignored.
Investigators were focusing their attention on reports that vendors displayed fireworks outside their stalls in the passageways which were designed as safety buffers to prevent the sort of devastating chain-reaction explosions that occurred.
Refugio Leon, whose family ran seven stalls in the market, said vendors commonly stacked displays of bottle rockets and firecrackers outside their establishments in violation of the rules.
“Everybody did it,” he said.
Video and photos of the stalls from previous years show concrete-block enclosures with open dirt passageways between them. Later photos show the passageways filling up with fireworks and awnings.
Because it was the holiday season, the market was packed with fireworks and bustling with hundreds of shoppers when the blasts occurred.