Fireworks blasts.
Explosions in Mexico kill 19.
Nineteen people were killed and at least 40 injured Thursday when a series of explosions ripped through fireworks workshops in a town just north of Mexico City.
The dead included four firefighters and two police officers who rushed to the scene after the first explosion, only to be killed by a second wave of blasts.
A massive plume of smoke rose from the area of the explosions in Tultepec. Buildings were wrecked and the ground scorched in 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 eight people from Tultepec were killed, along with the six emergency workers and two others who have not yet been identified. The state civil defense ofpeople fice later raised the death toll to 19 but did not specify who the other victims were.
The government also said first responders were among the injured. Helicopters took the wounded to several hospitals.
Luis Felipe Puente, the leaders of Mexico’s civil defense agency, said there were four blasts in total and the explosions started at an unauthorized, clandestine workshop and spread as flammable material shot into the air. He said the dead also apparently included one minor and a civil defense worker.
“The problem was that after the first explosion, people went running to help. And when the second explosion occurred, these who ran to help were killed,” 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.
In June, seven people were killed and eight injured in a blast in Tultepec. In December 2016, a massive fire at an open-air fireworks market crowded with holiday shoppers killed several dozen people.
Deadly fireworks explosions also have occurred elsewhere in Mexico. In 2002, a blast at a market in Veracruz killed 29; in 1999, 63 people died when an explosion of illegally stored fireworks destroyed part of the city of Celaya; in 1988, a fireworks blast in Mexico City killed at least 68; and in 2013, a rocket struck a truck loaded with fireworks for a religious procession in Tlaxcala, killing 17 people.