Mexico day-care fire kills 38 children

HERMOSILLO – Grieving parents began burying their children after a devastating day-care fire killed 38 infants and toddlers in a tragedy that has stunned the nation and prompted Mexico’s president to promise a thorough investigation.

The family of 2-year-old Maria Magdalena Millan dropped white roses onto her casket and attached a Dora the Explorer balloon to the cross marking her grave during one of the first funerals held on Saturday.
‘I love you and I don’t want to leave you here!’ her mother screamed at the funeral.
President Felipe Calderon arrived in the northwestern Mexican city late on Saturday to console the injured. He wished children a speedy recovery and promised families full support for their needs from his health ministry and a thorough investigation into the cause of a tragedy that he said was felt by all Mexicans.
The death toll rose to 38 on Saturday after three more children died in hospitals, according to Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez Vucovich. 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 on Saturday, three days after his fourth birthday and a day after the raging fire from an adjoining tyre and car warehouse spread to the roof of the day care and sent flames raining down on the young children.
Fire officials still don’t know how it started.
Ruelas and her husband saw television news reports that the ABC day care was ablaze on Friday and rushed over.
‘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.
Noe Velasquez, an employee at a nearby car 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.
The tragedy in Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora with a population of about 560 000, again raised questions about building safety in Mexico.
There were an estimated 142 children in the day care at the time of the fire, their ages ranging from six months to five years, and six staffers to look after them, Sonora state Governor Eduardo Bours said at a news conference.
– Nampa-AP