At least 32 confirmed dead following fireworks chain- reaction explosion

At least 32 people have been killed after a
fireworks market was flattened by a deadly
chain-reaction explosion on the outskirts
of Mexico City.


Health Secretary Cesar Gomez Monge, of
Mexico State, where the San Pablito
market is located in the city of Tultepec,
said 46 people remained in hospital, five of
them in such serious condition they are
fighting for their lives.

Ten of the injured were minors, including
one girl with burns over 90 per cent of her body.

Juana Antolina Hernandez, who has run a
stand for 22 years in San Pablito next to
one operated by her parents, escaped the
market in a mad dash when the explosions
began on Tuesday afternoon.
‘I can’t find my father
and my mother is
very badly burned,’
she said. ‘I am
waiting here for them
to tell me if my father
is here, but up to this
point, nothing.’
San Pablito was
bustling with hundreds of shoppers when
the blast reduced the market to a stark
expanse of ash, rubble and scorched
metal, casting a pall over the Christmas
season.

Dramatic video of the explosion showed a
towering plume of smoke that was lit up
by a staccato of bangs and flashes of
light, the third such incident to ravage the
market on the northern outskirts of
Mexico’s capital since 2005.
Refugio Leon, who
spent years working
at the market and
whose family ran
seven stalls there,
said vendors
commonly stacked
displays of bottle
rockets and
firecrackers outside
their establishments in the passageways –
even though the rules supposedly forbade
putting merchandise in what was
supposed to be a safety buffer to prevent
chain-reaction explosions.

Officials in Mexico State, which borders
Mexico City, said it was too early to
identify a cause of the massive series of
blasts.
On December 12 the
city of Tultepec
issued a statement
calling San Pablito
‘the safest market in
Latin America’.
The city quoted Juan
Ignacio Rodarte
Cordero, director of the state’s Fireworks
Institute, as saying ‘the stalls are perfectly
designed and with sufficient space
between them to avoid any chain of fires’.
However, the president of the leftist
Democratic Revolution Party, Alejandra
Barrales, noted that fireworks accidents
take place regularly, including four this
year alone.
‘This demonstrates
the lack of care and
attention not just
here but in the whole
state,’ Mr Barrales
said in a statement.
Mexico State chief
prosecutor Alejandro
Gomez said some of
the dead were so badly burned that neither
their age nor their gender could be
immediately determined, and that DNA
tests would be needed.

 He said the toll could rise because 12

people were listed as missing and some

body parts were found at the scene.

A list of the nine bodies identified so far

included a three-month-old boy and a 12-

year-old girl.