Owners of day care that burned quit government jobs

June 9, 2009 -- Updated 0256 GMT (1056 HKT)

Story Highlights

• NEW: Relatives of victims plan to march Wednesday evening
  
• Two owners resign to avoid any obstruction in the fire investigation, they say
  
• Co-owner: We didn't use government positions to obtain the day-care concession
  
• 44 children died in the day-care fire Friday in Hermosillo, Mexico
  

On Monday, two girls lay flowers during a funeral of one of the 44 children who died in the day-care fire.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico (CNN) -- Two of the owners of the day-care center that burned Friday, killing 44 children, have resigned jobs they had with the government, they told reporters Tuesday.

Antonio Salido, a functionary for the state of Sonora's secretary of urban infrastructure, and Alfonso Escalante, a sub-secretary of livestock farming, said they were resigning so that there would be no obstruction in the investigation into the cause of the fire.

Salido, speaking for both men, told reporters they had not used their government positions to obtain the day-care concession.

"We want to show you how deeply we feel about what happened in the terrible accident that occurred at ABC Day Care," he said.

"It passed the security measures and norms of operation required by the Mexican Institute of Social Security," he said, referring to the governmental organization that oversees the state-run school.

He noted that the institute's director, Daniel Karam Toumeh, said Sunday that the building had passed an inspection on May 26.

Abel Murrieta Gutierrez, the attorney general of Sonora, told CNN en Español that the investigation would not be affected by the fact that two of the owners worked for the government.

"It doesn't matter to us if they were or were not functionaries," he said.

Relatives of the victims and people seeking better security for day-care centers are planning to march Wednesday evening from near the day-care center to the government center.

The fire started Friday afternoon in an air-conditioning unit located in an adjacent warehouse, the attorney general of Sonora said Monday. Investigators are trying to determine whether the fire was caused by an overheated motor or deficiencies in its installation, Abel Murrieta Gutierrez said.

The fire then moved toward bookshelves on a wall shared with the building housing the center, which held 141 children and day-care workers, he added.

The two buildings also shared a roof, which contained a false bottom made of polyurethane. That overheated, emitting toxic fumes, he said.

As of Tuesday, 22 children remained hospitalized with burns.

One of them was the daughter of Raul Alvarez, who prayed Tuesday at an improvised altar outside the Children's Hospital in Hermosillo. "We went to see her this morning, and she was stable, the little girl," he said.

Hermosillo is the capital of the state of Sonora, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of the U.S. border in northwestern Mexico.

It has no hospitals that specialize in burns, so doctors here have been working to stabilize those most badly burned before sending them on for treatment in other cities.

"The most important thing is not so much the burn, but stabilizing them, making sure the kidney is functioning, the lung is functioning, the liver is functioning, the brain is functioning," said Raymond Lopez, Sonora's health secretary.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

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Mexico mourns dead children, vows probe into daycare fire

Posted: 07 June 2009 1206 hrs

Police officers seal off the front of a building where children died in a fire in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico

HERMOSILLO, Mexico: Mexico on Saturday mourned the deaths of at least 38 young victims of a daycare centre fire as parents carried out painful identifications of charred bodies.

Most of the fatalities from the Friday blaze at the state-run ABC daycare centre in Hermosillo, in northwestern Mexico, were under the age of two. With many still hospitalised in critical condition, the toll was expected to rise.

As fraught parents sat outside hospitals awaiting word on the fate of their children, questions were raised about how the fire began and whether deaths could have been prevented.

President Felipe Calderon cut short a trip to the resort town of Cancun and flew to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, to respond to the tragedy, a presidential source told AFP.

He was scheduled to visit a hospital where victims have been taken and meet with local authorities, the source said.

“I have ordered the federal prosecutor to as soon as possible carry out investigations to help us know exactly what and how it happened, and to work out corresponding responsibility," Calderon said in Cancun.

Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez said that 38 children have died and another 23 remain hospitalized, including 15 who are in extremely serious condition.

Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours said six adults had also been hospitalised after the blaze, which broke out when many at the daycare centre, located in an Hermosillo working class neighbourhood, were taking an afternoon nap.

Police officers seal off the front of a building where children died in a fire in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico

Some of the injured had been transferred to the western state of Jalisco to be treated by doctors specialized in children's burns, said Daniel Karam of the Mexican Social Security Institute.

One was even flown to a burns unit at a hospital in Sacramento in the US state of California.

Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, told reporters that it was too early to announce a final toll.

Most of the children died from smoke inhalation, officials said. Others died when the roof in the crib room collapsed.

Questions were already being raised about whether the deaths could have been prevented.

The centre lacked emergency exits and the structure was so weak that part of the roof caved in, on an area where many newborn babies were sleeping, reports said.

Local media suggested the fire had started in a neighboring tire shop, a claim the shop owners quickly denied, according to news reports.

The local prosecutor's office cautioned against premature conclusions, saying at the moment "it would be adventurous to pass judgment on what caused the fire."

In desperate scenes Friday, nearby residents smashed through the cement walls of the centre using cars and vans to try to save the children.

Emergency services arrived a good while after locals began bringing victims out, witnesses told AFP.

A 40-year-old man who lives in front of the centre and was the first to arrive told La Reforma daily how he handed burnt and lifeless bodies that he pulled from the building to his neighbours.

"It was a terrifying experience," said the man, identified as Roberto Bustamente, as he choked on tears. "There was a lot of smoke, but there were no children's cries. They were all unconscious or dead."

Some of the victims were buried Saturday, including the young daughter of a couple whose second daughter is hospitalized in serious condition.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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At least 29 children killed in Mexican daycare centre blaze

Posted: 06 June 2009 0915 hrs

Police guard the zone around a daycare centre where at least 29 children died in a fire in Hermosillo, Mexico.

MEXICO CITY: At least 29 children died, including many who were asphyxiated after a fire raced through a daycare centre in the northwestern Mexican border state of Sonora, local police said on Friday.

"We're still bringing bodies out," a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, Jose Larrinaga, said shortly beforehand.

Radio reports said there were many newborn babies in part of the centre where the fire caused the roof to collapse.

Local media reported that 176 children had been in the ABC daycare centre when the fire broke out at around 3:00pm (2000 GMT) in state capital Hermosillo.

State investigators rushed to the scene, following firefighters, Red Cross workers and police, according to the police statement.

Local press said that city residents also helped out in the face of the rapidly growing disaster.

The origin of the blaze was unclear early Friday evening.

Local media suggested it had started in a neighbouring tire shop, a claim the owners rapidly denied, according to news reports.

Medics transferred five children who had been identified by their parents to Sonora State children's hospital, a medical worker told AFP.

At least 30 children with serious burns were transferred overnight to a specialised hospital across the border in Arizona, according to El Imparcial daily.

The daycare centre belonged to Mexico's social security network, the Mexican presidency said in a statement which expressed President Felipe Calderon's "profound pain".

Calderon called on the national social security director, Daniel Karam Toumeh, to personally visit families and injured children at the scene, it added.

The federal government sent three air ambulances and more than a dozen specialised doctors to the scene, the statement said.

State Governor Eduardo Bours was in Arizona when the fire broke out and travelled to Hermosillo in the evening.

- AFP/so

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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