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Pemex headquarters blast leaves at least 14 dead in Mexico City Pemex headquarters blast leaves at least 25 dead in Mexico City
(about 2 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. Rescuers searched the rubble for survivors and authorities promised a thorough investigation after an office building blast killed 25 people and injured 101 at the headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos.
The blast damaged three floors of the building, sending hundreds into the streets and a large plume of smoke over the skyline. The cause of the basement explosion in an administrative building next to the 51-floor Pemex tower in Mexico City remained a mystery early on Friday, with the Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, urging people not to speculate. Theories ranged from an electrical fire to an air conditioning problem to a possible attack.
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. "We have no conclusive report on the reason," Pena Nieto told reporters. "We will work to get to the bottom of the investigation to find out, first, what happened work, and if there are people responsible in this case, that we apply the full weight of the law against them."
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. Some 46 people remained hospitalized after the Thursday afternoon blast, some gravely injured and others with cuts, fractures and burns. Authorities said the dead were 17 women and eight men.
"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." More than 500 firefighters, soldiers and rescue workers dug through chunks of concrete with dogs, trucks and a
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. Pemex crane.
"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." The interior minister, Miguel Osorio Chong, said it was uncertain if any of the roughly 10,000 people who work in the five-building headquarters were still trapped, but that the search would continue. The explosion occurred at about 3.45pm local time, just as the administrative shift was about to end. It hit the basement and first two floors, which rescuers said all collapsed onto each other.
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. "There is a lot of risk," rescuer German Vazquez Garcia said of working on the site.
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. Pemex first said it had evacuated the tower and 14-floor administrative building because of a problem with the electrical system. The company later tweeted that the attorney general's office was investigating the explosion.
Ana Vargas Palacio was distraught as she searched for her missing husband, Daniel Garcia Garcia, 36, who works in the building where the explosion occurred. She said she last talked to him a couple hours earlier.
"I called his phone many times, but a young man answered and told me he found the phone in the debris," Vargas said. The two have an 11-year-old daughter. His mother, Gloria Garcia Castaneda, collapsed on a friend's arm, crying "My son. My son."
Gabriela Espinoza, 50, a Pemex secretary for 29 years, was on the second floor of the tower when she said she heard two loud explosions and a third smaller one.
"There was a very loud roar. It was very ugly," she said.
Espinoza's co-worker, Tomas Rivera, 32, worked on the ground floor where the explosion occurred and said the force knocked him to the basement, fracturing his wrist and jaw. The injured were taken to two Pemex hospitals and other facilities, including the Red Cross hospital in the Polanco neighbourhood near the oil company's office headquarters, where relatives huddled in the waiting room for news of their loved ones. Some walked out of meetings with the hospital social worker joyous, while others came out crying.
"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 same block as the Pemex building. "People started running from the building covered in dust. A lot of pieces were flying."
Streets surrounding the building were closed as evacuees wandered around, and rescue crews loaded the injured into ambulances.Streets surrounding the building were closed as evacuees wandered around, and rescue crews loaded the injured into ambulances.
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. Pemex, created as a state-owned company in 1938, has nearly 150,000 employees and in 2011 produced about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil a day, according to its website, with $111 billion in sales. Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has made Pemex reform the center of his platform, with a plan to pump new investment into a company whose profits feed much of Mexico's federal budget, but which has fallen behind other oil companies in production, technology and exploration.
Shortly before the explosion, Operations Director Carlos Murrieta reported via Twitter that the company had reduced its accident rate in recent years. Most Pemex accidents have occurred at pipeline and refinery installations.
A fire at a pipeline metering center in northeast Mexico near the Texas border killed 30 workers in September, the largest-single toll in at least a decade for the company.