Evacuees Begin Returning 3 Days After Gas Leak Killed 6 in Mexico

Hundreds of Veracruz state residents returned to their homes Saturday after a three-day evacuation caused by a deadly leak of ammonia gas that killed six people and injured 25.

The rupture Wednesday of the gas line owned by the state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, is the latest in a string of oil-related accidents that have plagued this area in recent years. Pemex said the leak, in the southern Veracruz town of Nanchital, happened when a private crew inadvertently punctured the gas line while doing regular maintenance. The six people who were killed worked for the contractor.

The leak spread a noxious cloud of deadly gas, prompting the evacuation of 6,000 people from eight neighborhoods in eastern Nanchital, said Alfredo Gonzalez of the town’s civil protection department. Ammonia gas can cause blindness, severe respiratory injuries and death.

Pemex said the leak was quickly plugged, but the persistent ammonia cloud prevented a rescue team from recovering the bodies of the six victims until Friday.

Veracruz Gov. Fidel Herrera, saying the residue of the gas still posed a hazard, extended the evacuation notice Friday for an additional 24 hours. But only a few dozen people remained in the main Nanchital shelter Saturday afternoon.

“People want to get back to their homes, because they are worried about getting burglarized,” said a town official who asked not to be named.

For Nanchital, a bedroom community of mostly oil workers five miles from Pemex’s Coatzacoalcos refining complex on the Gulf of Mexico, oil has been a blessing and a curse.

Most families depend on the industry for their livelihoods, working in refineries or on offshore oil platforms. But Pemex’s aging pipeline infrastructure and faulty maintenance have resulted in several spills and leaks in recent years.

A dozen oil and gas ducts a yard in diameter pass beneath Nanchital, connecting crude oil terminals and the refinery complex to the rest of the country, and many residents say they are living on a time bomb.

On Dec. 22, at least 5,000 barrels of crude oil spilled in the Coatzacoalcos River when a Pemex pipeline burst in Nanchital. The oil flowed five miles downstream to the Gulf of Mexico, coating miles of coastline and causing one of the country’s worst environmental accidents in years.

Pemex General Director Luis Ramirez Corzo recently urged Mexico’s Congress to budget an additional $3 billion annually to help upgrade Pemex pipelines. The attorney general’s office said Friday that it would investigate the accident and possibly bring criminal charges against the company that caused it.