Mexico day care fire kills 38 children
HERMOSILLO, Mexico — Sobbing relatives waited outside a morgue Saturday to claim the bodies from a day-care fire that killed 38 children in northern Mexico despite desperate attempts to evacuate babies and toddlers through the building's only working exit. A father crashed his pickup truck through the wall in an effort to rescue his child.
The family of 2-year-old Maria Magdalena Millan held a funeral for her, dropping white roses onto her tiny coffin and attaching a Dora the Explorer balloon to the cross marking her grave. One woman held a framed picture of her.
"I love you and I don't want to leave you here!" her mother screamed.
President Felipe Calderon arrived late Saturday with his health minister and interior secretary to visit victims in two hospitals. He wished the children a speedy recovery and promised families a full investigation to determine the cause of a tragedy he said was painful to all Mexicans, according to a statement from his office.
The death toll rose to 38 after three more children died Saturday, Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez Vucovich told a news conference. Most of the victims had died of organ collapse caused by smoke inhalation, he said.
Delfina Ruelas, 60, said her grandchild German Leon died of his burns Saturday morning, three days after his fourth birthday. She and her husband saw television news reports that the ABC day care was on fire Friday and rushed over that evening.
"I thought he wasn't that burned and that we would find him OK, but he was very burned," said Ruelas, dissolving into tears outside the morgue in the northern city of Hermosillo, where she waited along with 30 other relatives. "They operated on him yesterday, and he held on, but today he couldn't hold on."
Firefighters carried injured children through the front door _ the building's only working exit _ and through large holes that a civilian knocked into the walls before rescue crews arrived, according to a fire department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the fire.
Noe Velasquez, an employee at a nearby auto parts store who helped pull out five toddlers, said the father of one of the children rammed his pickup truck through a wall. Velasquez did not know if the man's child survived.
"I didn't sleep last night. I've never gone through anything like that in all my life," he said.
The tragedy in Hermosillo, capital city of the northwestern state of Sonora, population about 560,000, again raised questions about building safety in Mexico. Officials cracked down on code violations last year following a deadly stampede at a nightclub that killed 12 and a deadly disco fire nine years ago that killed 21. Both clubs were in Mexico City.
There were an estimated 142 children in the day care at the time of the fire, their ages ranging from 6 months to 5 years, and six staffers to look after them, Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours said at a news conference.
The ratio is in keeping with legal standards, said Daniel Karam, the director of Mexico's Social Security Institute, which outsourced services to the privately run day care.
A May 26 inspection found that the day care building _ a converted warehouse with a few windows mounted high up _ complied with safety standards, Karam added.
Asked if the single functioning exit constituted a safety code violation, Karam only repeated that the building had passed the inspection, although he conceded that the security requirements might have to be re-evaluated.
"We always have to be open to improvements, especially when we have a tragedy that has so moved us," Karam said.
Guadalupe Arvizu, who was visiting her injured 2-year-old grandson at a hospital, said the building has an emergency exit but it could not be opened on the day of the fire. She did not know why.
"The place is in bad condition. It's a warehouse. There are no windows in the classrooms," said Arvizu, whose daughter _ the boy's mother _ is a caretaker at the day care but was not injured in the fire.
Some of the children had third-degree burns, the Hermosillo fire department official said.
"As a doctor I have confronted death on many occasions," said Lopez, the state health secretary, his voice cracking. "But I'm seeing so much misfortune and suffering now, it breaks my heart."
Thirty-three children remain hospitalized, 23 of them in Hermosillo, including 15 who are in critical condition, Lopez said. One of them is brain dead.
Nine children have been transferred to other Mexican hospitals, eight of them to the western Mexican city of Guadalajara that has a special burn unit, and one to Ciudad Obregon in Sonora, he said.
A 3-year-old girl with burns over 80 percent of her body was sent by military transport to be treated at Shriners Hospital for Children Northern California, said Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, Consul General for Mexico based in Sacramento, California.
The girl's injuries could require months of treatment, which will be free of charge, Gonzalez Gutierrez said. One parent is traveling with the girl, and will be housed nearby.
"It's going to be challenging. The survivability is about 50 percent. A lot of it is how deep the burn is and where it's located and how bad is the smoke inhalation," said Dr. Tina Palmieri, assistant chief of burns for Shriners'.
Four children have been released from the hospital, along with two of six adults who had been admitted, Lopez said. The hospitalized adults included five of six women who took care of the children at the center, plus a security guard. The four still hospitalized are in stable condition, Lopez said.
Lopez encouraged citizens to donate blood because he said many of the children are going to need it.
Velasquez said he and several other people rushed to the day care when they saw smoke. Teachers already had lined up some of the children outside but the very smallest were trapped inside, some of them in their cribs. Velasquez said he pulled out limp toddlers without knowing if they were dead or alive.
The fire started at an adjoining tire and car warehouse leased by the state government, Bours said. The blaze eventually spread to the roof of the day care, sending flames raining down on the children, according to the fire department official.
Firefighters took two hours to control the blaze, the cause of which was still unconfirmed. Police trucks cordoned off the block surrounding the cavernous salmon-and-blue day care, while forensic investigators gathered material, searching for clues to what started the blaze.
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Associated Press Writers Alexandra Olson in Mexico City and Don Thompson in Sacramento contributed to this report.
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OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ | June 6, 2009 11:36 PM EST |
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