Under orders from the president to fix blame for a series of deadly sewer-line explosions, investigators questioned officials into the early morning hours Friday, trying to determine whether criminal negligence played a part.
Two days after the blasts, the casualty count remained uncertain. The state attorney general, Leonardo Larios Guzman, said the death toll was 202, the Red Cross said 184, and the state health minister said 176.Guadalajara Mayor Enrique Dau Flores and his sewer system chief, Gualberto Limon, asked Thursday for leaves of absence during the investigation, Jalisco state officials said. The mayor said he wanted investigators to be able freely to examine all circumstances and decision-making surrounding the disaster.
Half the victims were children, said Jalisco state's health minister, Dr. Palemon Rodriguez. Many small wooden coffins were among about 120 lowered Thursday into graves in one cemetery near the disaster site in Mexico's second-largest city.
At a makeshift morgue in a sports stadium, one man picked up the body of a child and put it into a tiny white coffin. Relatives wailed as they looked at lists with the names of the dead.
"It's the biggest tragedy that we've ever had in Guadalajara," said volunteer Ralph Espinoza. "It's out of Dante, you know, the Inferno."
Jalisco Gov. Guillermo Cosio Villegas said 1,361 people were injured and about 15,000 left homeless. The first damage estimate was $300 million.
State officials promised to give those left homeless priority in new government-financed housing. Mexican and U.S. relief organizations joined to rush aid to the disaster victims. One group of Mexico City street children donated teddy bears they had received as presents.
Authorities said the likely cause of at least nine blasts that ripped through Guadalajara's eastern Reforma district was either volatile hexane leaked by a cooking-oil company, or gasoline leaked or dumped from tanks owned by the state oil company, Pemex. Officials from both companies denied responsibility.
A chemical engineer who heads a state team of investigators, Esequiel Mendez, said late Thursday that Pemex was one of the main suspects. If the investigation determines that Pemex was to blame, high-level federal and state officials may be fired.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, at a news conference on Thurday afternoon, gave his attorney general 72 hours to determine if the disaster "could have been avoided and as a consequence, if there was criminal negligence of public servants."
Before the explosions, residents had complained about strong gasoline-like fumes in the area.
Salinas apparently is attempting to avoid possible political fallout from the disaster. His party, which has won every election since 1929 despite ongoing complaints of corruption, suffered after accusations of inaction following the 1985 Mexico City earthquake in which 10,000 people died.
The governor had earlier blamed city officials for failing to act on residents' complaints of strong fumes. The mayor said the sewer system chief and the fire chief sent inspectors to the scene Tuesday evening, but that they went home after assuring him that any danger was receding.
On Thursday, the mayor ordered the evacuation of a section of the Alamo district, east of the devastated district, after residents complained of fumes. Many of those left homeless or bereaved by Wednesday's explosions blamed the government.
"They cover up," said taxi driver Alfonson Gomez, who lived in the area. "The government does that all the time."
State officials had been quick to blame cooking oil companies, but backed off Thursday and said they would wait for the results of the investigation.
Jorge Alexandre, a senior manager for the La Central cooking oil company, said the firm had a system to control hexane seepage and that it leaked only traces of the chemical in the worst of times. It would have taken tons of hexane to cause a blast of Wednesday's proportions, he said.
Pemex, which has fuel storage tanks in the area, sent workers into the Reforma district to check lines on Thursday. It later suspended natural gas deliveries to industrial customers and closed its gas stations there. Francisco Rojas, the company's director-general, described the moves as precautionary.