Rescuers are searching for survivors of a powerful gas explosion that shattered a maternity and children’s hospital in Mexico City, killing at least three adults and one baby while injuring dozens more.
Claudia Dominguez, a spokeswoman for the city’s civil defence agency, confirmed the deaths from the gas tank truck explosion, but said she could not verify a report by a local borough chief, Adrian Rubalcava, that seven had died.
Felicitas Hernandez cried as she waited outside the mostly collapsed building hoping for word of her month-old baby, who had been in hospital since birth with respiratory problems.
“They wouldn’t let me sleep with him,” said Ms Hernandez, who said she had come to the city-run Maternity and Children’s Hospital of Cuajimalpa because she had no money.
The explosion occurred when the tanker was making a routine, early morning fill-up in the hospital kitchen and gas started to leak. Witnesses said the tanker workers struggled frantically for 15 or 20 minutes to repair the leak while a large cloud of gas formed.
“The hose broke. The two gas workers tried to stop it, but they were very nervous. They yelled for people to get out,” said laboratory technician Laura Diaz Pacheco.
“Everyone’s initial reaction was to go inside, away from the gas. Maybe as many as 10 of us were able to get out . . . The rest stayed inside.”
Workers on the truck shouted “Call the firefighters, call the firefighters”, said anaesthesiologist Agustin Herrera. People started to evacuate the hospital, and then came the massive explosion that sent up an enormous fireball and plumes of dust and smoke.
Mr Herrera saw injured mothers walking out carrying babies. He said there had been nine babies in the 35-bed hospital’s nursery, one in a very serious condition before the explosion.
“We avoided a much bigger tragedy because the oxygen tanks are right beside and they didn’t explode,” Mr Herrera said. The most affected parts of the hospital were the neonatology, reception and emergency reception units, he added.
The driver and two employees were hospitalised but were also in custody, said a Mexico City government spokesman.
Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera earlier said at least 54 people had been injured, 22 of them children. Most of the injuries were relatively minor, he said, many caused by flying glass.
The explosion sent a column of smoke billowing over the area on the western edge of Mexico’s capital and television images showed much of the hospital collapsed, with firefighters trying to extinguish fires.
Mr Mancera said the fire continued burning because firefighters recommended that they allow the truck’s remaining gas to burn off.