A FIRE RACED THROUGH A DAY-CARE CENTER IN SONORA, MEXICO, Friday afternoon killing at least 29 31 children and leaving another 30 or more injured, many with varying degrees of burns. The disaster took place in the city of Hermosillo which is close to the American border.
By 3 pm when the fire started, many of the child care center’s children had already been picked up by their parents, but 170 more were still on the premises, all of them ages 1 to 5. The fire began in a tire warehouse next door to the nursery and spread rapidly into the adjoining child care center.
The Associated Press has this early video report:
Teachers made a valiant effort to get as many of the infants out as they could, but much of it was futile. There is no report that there was any attempt to evacuate when the initial alarm was sounded for the warehouse. Search efforts are continuing Saturday morning.
Firefighters breached the walls in several locations as they
made attempts to locate the infants in the smoke and fire.
(AFP photo)
Mexican news agencies are reporting that many of the children were newborn, and that part of the roof had collapsed during the blaze which lasted for about two hours. Many of the burn victims have been transferred to a burn hospital in Arizona, USA, and Mexico has dispatched 15 burn specialist doctors to the scene.
Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the Sonora state prosecutor’s office, said that most of the dead children had died of asphyxiation.
