Guadalajara Officials Quit Over Explosion

The mayor of Guadalajara stepped down and key municipal and state officials resigned Friday as the political fallout intensified in the wake of the underground gas explosions that devastated a large area of the city this week.

The resignations of the heads of the fire department and the regional sewer system followed angry denunciations by residents that city officials were aware of the dangerous accumulation of volatile gas in the sewer system but failed to order an evacuation of the area.

Red Cross officials said the death toll in Wednesday’s explosions had reached 215, and rescue workers continued to recover bodies in the downtown neighborhoods leveled by the blast.

As federal officials pressed ahead with their investigation into the causes of the disaster, Mayor Enrique Dau Flores told a chaotic meeting of the Guadalajara City Council that he was taking a leave of absence.

Dau said he was stepping down “to give more freedom to the investigators so they can examine the causes of this incident and the actions of city officials.”

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ordered the investigation, which is being conducted by the attorney general’s office. The results are scheduled to be released this weekend.

Officials first pointed to the La Central cooking factory as a possible source of the explosive gas, saying the company had dumped hexane, a highly volatile liquid, into the city sewer system. But on Friday, officials focused their attention on a gasoline storage facility operated by Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, the government oil monopoly.

Guillermo Cosio Vidaurri, governor of Jalisco state, whose capital is Guadalajara, told a news conference late Thursday that public safety workers allowed gas fumes to build up in the sewers unmonitored for seven hours before the series of explosions began Wednesday.

The fire department and water department workers sent to monitor the gas levels, Cosio said, apparently went home at 3 a.m. Wednesday because they were tired and thought there was not enough threat to warrant evacuation of the Reforma district.

In Mexico City, a top government official suggested that Pemex and private companies may share responsibility for the explosions. The official, who asked that his name not be published, added that more than one type of gas may have been involved.

In a new development, several neighborhoods in the city center were evacuated Thursday and Friday after Pemex workers discovered that gasoline leaking from a pipeline was seeping onto a busy downtown street. The pipeline is used to transfer gasoline from a nearby Pemex storage facility and runs under the sewer line that exploded.

Some members of the Guadalajara City Council pointed at Pemex. “We need to ask that Pemex move its tanks and facilities outside of Guadalajara, so they can no longer endanger the people of this city,” said Councilman Manuel Baeza Gonzales.

Gonzales also joined other council members in voting to grant the mayor’s request for a leave of absence.

The vote came after a raucous public meeting, in which about 400 supporters of the mayor chanted “No!” and rushed the dais.

Dau restored order by calling for a moment of silence for the victims of the explosion.

Outside the council chambers, however, opponents of the mayor gathered to denounce the government corruption they said was responsible for the tragedy.

“This has been happening for years,” said Mayela Hernandez, 35. “It’s the system of the PRI (the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party) that’s to blame.”

In the downtown neighborhood ruined by the blast, rescuers continued their efforts to find survivors who might be trapped in the rubble.

Fernando Perez, president of the local Red Cross, said there was little hope of finding anyone alive.

The last such survivor was a 45-year-old man rescued Thursday morning, 24 hours after the explosion.

Specially trained dogs helped find him, Perez said.

Among the bodies recovered were those of three city firefighters who were killed by the blast while investigating the reports of a gas leak, Perez said.

The Red Cross official said 6,300 people lost their homes in the blast. Another 30,000 were evacuated from the blast area, many because of the leak in the Pemex pipeline.