Fire burned 20 minutes in warehouse before torching child centre

Jun 11, 2009, 15:44 GMT

Mexico City - The warehouse adjoining a day care centre in the Mexican city of Hermosillo burned for 20-25 minutes before the fire moved on to the educational institution and killed 44 children there, Mexican authorities said.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said late Wednesday that last week's fire started in the warehouse due to an overheated air conditioner.

When warehouse staff left at 2:15 p.m. last Friday, some 45 minutes before the day care centre went up in flames, the faulty equipment 'was left to function fully.'

'There were no personnel inside the central warehouse that noticed the fire had started there,' Medina Mora said.

For that reason, he explained, the fire was only noticed when its flames licked the day care centre.

Technical reports said that as the air conditioner overheated its internal aluminium parts started to melt. This generated a 'leak of melted metal' on the paper and the cardboard that was held in the warehouse of the Finance Ministry of the state of Sonora.

Combustion was slow, and the fire then started to rise.

'We estimate that the propagation of the fire in the central section of the industrial warehouse to the day care centre took approximately 20 to 25 minutes,' Medina Mora said.

People at the day care centre did not notice it until it was too late, since the smoke first gathered in the space between the metal plate roof and the polyurethane isolation.

Teachers first noticed it when the polyurethane started to melt and give out toxic gases.

Beyond the 44 dead - from newborns to 5-year-olds - the fire caused injuries to 25 children and four adults. Ten of the children remained in very serious condition due to burns or intoxication.