Death toll rises to 46 in Mexico day care centre fire

Jun 15, 2009, 0:16 GMT

Mexico City - Another child's death has been added to the tragic toll from a day care center fire in Hermosillo, a town in northern Mexico, bringing the total of dead to 46, officials confirmed Sunday.

A three-year-old child, Jorge Sebastian Carrillo Gonzalez, died Saturday in a hospital in Guadalajara from severe burns in the June 6 fire, Sonora state's Health Minister Raymundo Lopez Vucovich said.

Another three-year-old child, Juan Israel Fernandez, died on Friday in the same hospital, he said.

Grief and anger over the losses in the child care facility that served a public agency and was owned by politically well-connected people, provoked a demonstration of 5,000 people on Saturday in Hermosillo. They expressed solidarity with the parents of the lost children and demanded a swift investigation and swift justice.

They set up 46 white crosses and a child's coffin at the regional government's building.

Local officials came under criticism for decisions made about where to transport the children for care. Many were taken to hospitals outside Hermosillo, where local hospitals were overwhelmed by the challenges.

Alberto Barreda Robinson charged the officials were negligent for not making use of the special Shriners Hospitals across North America which provide free care for children suffering burns, spinal cord injuries, orthopaedic conditions and cleft lip and palate.

In an interview with the newspaper La Jornada, he charged that local doctors were not trained to deal with small children and burns. The victims ranged in age from 3 months to three years.

Robinson disputed claims that the weather had been too bad to allow air transport of the children to more specialized clinics, and he estimated that at least seven other patients were still in danger in local hospitals after surviving the most critical phase of burn recovery.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora has launched an investigation.

The fire started in a warehouse directly connected to the day care center and went unnoticed because staff had gone for the day. The heat and flames gathered in a space between the metal plate roof, then melted the polyurethane isolation in the day care center. Most of the children died of asphyxia, but many also experienced severe burns.