MEXICO CITY -- Survivors of an explosion at a gas distribution center that killed hundreds of people accused Mexico's state-run oil company Thursday of negligence in the blast.
A gas explosion and raging fire at the distribution center north of Mexico City Monday destroyed the working class neighborhood of San Juancio, killing at least 370 people.
Five San Juanico residents, neighborhood representatives to the municipality of Tlanepantla, cited negligence on the part of Pemex, the state-run oil company, which used the gas distribution center along with other private companies.
Pemex director Mario Ramon Beteta has dismissed charges that lax safety measures were responsible for the disaster. Pemex has blamed the private gas distributor Unigas.
Fernando Gomez Ruiz, manager of the National Association of Gas Distributors, rejected accusations of neglect, noting the Unigas installations are nearly intact while only a few Pemex gas tanks escaped the explosions.
Guillermo Salomon Flores, Tiburcio Sanchez, Amparo Garcia, Eligio Rocha and Gabriel Gracida, the five San Juancio residents representing the survivors, said Pemex had been warned about gas leaks on several occasions but failed to take precautionary measures.
Salomon Flores said two fires, one in 1972 and another in March of this year, broke out on the Pemex section of the distribution center.
Gabriel Gracida, another survivor of Monday's blaze, said the March fire was due to neglect. 'Pemex employees gathered large amounts of wood around the gas tanks,' which later caught on fire and were extinguished before causing serious damages, Gabriel Gracida said.
The March fire prompted Tiburcio Sanchez to lead a group of neighbors to complain to Pemex officials about the dangers posed by carelessness at the gas distribution center.
'Along with denouncing gas leaks, we also asked Pemex to instruct the neighbors on how to react in the case of a leak or a fire. But nobody paid any attention to us,' he said.
Another resident, Amparo Garcia, charged that frequently 'the employees got drunk and slept without watching the gas monitors.'
And just a month ago, Salomon said he and his brother warned guards at the center about a gas leak, which he said was repaired, but very slowly and apathetically.
'At midnight, my brother Alfredo and I went to wake up the guards and warn them,' Salomon said. 'They ran to wake up the workers who took more than an hour to control the gas leak.'
