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Mexico City blast at Pemex headquarters leaves at least 14 dead Mexico City blast at Pemex headquarters leaves at least 25 dead
(about 5 hours later)
At least 14 people died and scores more were injured in an explosion at the main headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil company in Mexico City Thursday. A powerful explosion rocked the Mexico City headquarters of state-owned oil giant Pemex on Thursday, killing at least 25 people, injuring more than 100 and trapping others inside.
The blast damaged three floors of the building, sending hundreds into the streets and a large plume of smoke over the skyline. The mid-afternoon blast in a neighbouring building shattered the lower floors of the downtown tower, throwing debris into the streets and sending workers running outside.
Interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said 80 people were injured along with the 14 dead, but told local television the death toll could still rise. A government official said a preliminary line of investigation was that the blast came from a gas boiler that exploded in the adjacent Pemex building. But the cause was still being determined, the official added.
There were also reports that as many as 30 people were trapped in the debris from the explosion, which occurred in the basement of an administrative building next to the 52-storey tower of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. There was no immediate cause given for the blast. The explosion at the building complex, where thousands of Pemex employees worked, was the latest in a series of serious safety problems to hit Mexico's national oil monopoly.
"It was an explosion, a shock, the lights went out and suddenly there was a lot of debris," employee Cristian Obele told Milenio television, adding that he had been injured in the leg. "Coworkers helped us get out of the building." Rescue workers were still searching for employees trapped inside the Pemex skyscraper on Thursday night. At least one person had been rescued alive.
The tower, where several thousand people work, was evacuated. The main floor and the mezzanine of the auxiliary building, where the explosion occurred, were heavily damaged, along with windows as far as three floors up. Mauricio Parra, a paramedic at the scene, said that as many as 100 people could be trapped at the offices of Pemex, a national institution that president Enrique Pena Nieto's administration has pledged to reform this year.
"We were talking and all of sudden we heard an explosion with white smoke and glass falling from the windows," said Maria Concepcion Andrade, 42, who lives on the block of Pemex building. "People started running from the building covered in dust. A lot of pieces were flying." Police quickly cordoned off the building, and television images showed the explosion caused major damage to the ground floor and blew out windows on the lower floors of the tower.
A reporter at the scene saw rescue workers trying to free several workers trapped. Television images showed people being evacuated by office chairs, and gurneys. Most of them had injuries likely caused by falling debris. Police landed four rescue helicopters to remove the dead or injured. About a dozen tow trucks were furiously moving cars to make more landing room for the helicopters. "You could feel it all through the building," said Mario Guzman, a Pemex worker who was on the 10th floor of the building, which is more than 50 stories high.
In an earlier tweet, the company said it had evacuated the building as a precautionary measure because of a problem with the electrical system in the complex that includes the skyscraper. First mistaking the blast for an earthquake, Guzman, who said he escaped after running down the stairs, feared the building would collapse on top of him and his colleagues, "and that we would end up like a sandwich."
Streets surrounding the building were closed as evacuees wandered around, and rescue crews loaded the injured into ambulances. Pemex said initially the tower was evacuated due to a problem with its electricity supply. It then said there had been an explosion, but did not say what caused it.
Interior department spokesman Eduardo Sanchez confirmed that an explosion in a basement garage damaged the first and second floors of the auxiliary building, which is located in a busy commercial and residential area. The Pemex blast occurred shortly before many workers were due to end their shifts at the complex.
The company said its business would not be affected by the incident and that it would continue to operate normally.
Earlier in the evening, Pena Nieto, who took office in December, went to the scene and said the explosion would be thoroughly investigated. He vowed to apply "the force of the law" if anyone was found to be responsible for it.
Mexican media reported that after the blast, security officials carried out a precautionary search of Congress for explosive devices, but found nothing.
Search-and-rescue dogs were sent into the skyscraper, a Mexico City landmark that sports a distinctive "hat" on top.
Some families of people working in the tower were impatient for news about missing relatives.
Gloria Garcia, 53, herself a Pemex worker who was not in the building during the explosion, came to see if she could track down her son, who worked in one of the floors hit.
"I'm calling his phone and he's not answering," Garcia said, weeping as she called repeatedly on her phone. "Nobody knows anything. They won't let me through. I want to see my son whatever state he's in."
Pemex has experienced a number of deadly accidents in recent years and lesser safety problems have been a regular occurrence. In September, 30 people died after an explosion at a Pemex natural gas facility in northern Mexico.
More than 300 were killed when a Pemex natural gas plant on the outskirts of Mexico City exploded in 1984.
Eight years later, about 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured after a series of underground gas explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city. An official investigation found Pemex was partly to blame.