A massive explosion gutted Mexico’s biggest fireworks market on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and injuring 72, authorities said.
The conflagration in the Mexico City suburb of Tultepec set off a quick-fire series of multicolored blasts that sent a vast cloud of smoke billowing over the capital.
The market had been packed with customers buying pyrotechnics for traditional New Year festivities. Christmas and New Year parties in many Latin American nations often end with clattering firework blasts.
Photo: AFP
“You just heard the blast and everything started to be on fire. People came running out on fire,” Walter Garduno said.
“People were alight — children,” he added, before trailing off.
From a few kilometers away, the multiple explosions that started at 2:50pm almost looked festive, alight in blue, red and white. They were anything but.
Of the 31 confirmed dead, “26 [died] at the scene and five in hospitals,” local media reported Mexican Chief Prosecutor Milenio Alejandro Gomez as saying.
Forensic experts were working on genetic analyses of the bodies because “almost all of them are impossible” to identify, Mexican State Governor Eruviel Avila told Televisa TV.
At least 72 were wounded, authorities said. The injured were transported to emergency rooms and 21 had since been released.
Fire crews struggled for three hours before bringing the blaze under control.
Mexican Civil Protection Service head Luis Felipe Puente said crews had to wait for all the fireworks to finish exploding before they could extinguish the flames.
“The entire market is gone,” he said.
Several of the injured were in “delicate condition,” he added, saying searches were under way for more casualties in the scorched area that looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, with little left standing in the smoldering ruins.
Homes and vehicles nearby were also severely damaged.
In some areas, emergency workers were gently probing for survivors under heaps of charred and twisted roofing material.
People desperately searching for family and friends shouted and gestured to rescuers about where they hoped the missing might be found.
Most of those picked up by rescuers suffered severe burns, many over their entire bodies.
The military, which is in charge of issuing fireworks sales permits, was deployed to help emergency crews transport casualties to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter.
Ambulances, fire trucks, police vehicles and army trucks all crowded the sprawling blast area.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted his condolences to the families of those killed and his wishes for the injured to recover.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique