For many of its residents, Tultepec does have a certain magic to it. On each of the town’s many religious holidays, fireworks illuminate the skies, the whistles and blasts signaling a night of music and celebration. Crowds flock to the town — located just north of Mexico City and considered the country’s capital of pyrotechnics — for its biggest festival of the year in March, just to see the castles of fire and the brightly colored bulls parading through the streets.“It’s incredible to see the work that people do here,” one resident, Mary Rubio, said in an interview with The Post. “It’s what moves the town.”
But it’s also what nearly consumed it Tuesday afternoon, when a powerful chain-reaction explosion caused an open-air fireworks market in the town to erupt in flames and smoke, killing 29 people and leaving dozens with critical burns. Officials have not yet said what may have caused the blast, which destroyed more than 80 percent of the 300 stalls in the San Pablito fireworks market, its booths packed with merchandise for its peak season leading up to the holidays.
© R. Israel Gutierrez/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images Relatives grieve by the body of victim of a blast at a fireworks market in Tultepec, Mexico.Mexico State authorities said 72 people were being treated for injuries from Tuesday’s explosion. At least 10 children were among the hospitalized, some with burns on 90 percent of their bodies. Three children were transferred to Galveston, Tex., for additional medical treatment. One of the deceased was 3 months old.
The extent of the burns made it difficult to identify some of the victims, said Eruviel Ávila, governor of the State of Mexico, as he walked through one of the hospitals treating the injured. “The State of Mexico is in mourning for this lamentable accident,” he said on Facebook live. “We had a very difficult day.”
For some townspeople, magical or not, the dangerous tradition of artisan firework production has taken the lives of far too many.
It was the third big explosion at the market since 2005, and the latest in a series of other fatal explosions that have scarred the densely populated town of 150,000 people in recent years.
Tultepec is not alone in such misfortune.
Across Mexico, fireworks play a central cultural role in religious celebrations, and similar deadly accidents resulting from fireworks are not uncommon across the rest of the country. They frequently occur at the end of the year, as Christmas draws near. In 2002, a blast at a market in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz killed 29 in 1999, 63 people died when an explosion of illegally stored fireworks destroyed part of the city of Celaya and in 1988, a fireworks blast in Mexico City’s La Merced market killed at least 68.
© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post This image from a drone shows smoke billowing from the San Pablito Market in Tultepec, Mexico, where an explosion ripped through a fireworks…Rubio was in her house with her three children when she suddenly started hearing the faint, shrill sound of a firework setting off — a whistle, a pop and a crack to which she was accustomed in Tultepec. But soon the sounds became more frequent and frightening. “Then, it was no longer normal,” she told The Post.
Suddenly, a loud blast caused the ground and the windows to tremble. Rubio ran outside with neighbors, and from the corner of her block saw a cloud of smoke rising above the market, about a mile and a half away. For the next three hours, she heard ambulances racing past her house.
As soon as Solano Sanchez heard the blast, he jumped on his bike and raced to the market to help rescue people from the rubble. Having lived in Tultepec his entire life, he has witnessed many previous explosions — but, he said, “this one was different.”
He couldn’t enter the center of the market, because the flames continued to blaze, the smoke enveloping the area. From the fringes, he saw people passed out, with severe burns and lacerations from stones that had flown in the air from the blast. As he helped carry people to ambulances, he heard people screaming and calling out names of family members. “You couldn’t see anything,” he said.
“I’ve never felt something this sad,” he said. The loss of lives was devastating. And the loss of the market would be a massive blow to the community. More than three-quarters of the town’s residents are in some way involved in the pyrotechnic industry, he said.
“It’s what sustains the municipality,” he said.
The market’s vendors were expected to sell 100 tons of fireworks by the end of its season, which lasts from August through December, according to Mexican news outlet
