2023-10-02 22:40:00
– Death toll from church roof collapse rises to 11
The roof of a church collapsed on Sunday in northeastern Mexico, believed to be due to structural failure.
Published today at 12:40 a.m.
Search operations, carried out with the help of rescue dogs, were suspended late Monday morning.
AFP
The death toll from the collapse of the roof of a church on Sunday in Ciudad Madero, in northeastern Mexico, rose to eleven dead on Monday following the death of a seriously injured person, authorities announced.
“Unfortunately, I have just learned that another person has died. We have eleven dead,” the city’s mayor, Adrian Oseguera, told reporters at the scene of the tragedy during a baptism attended by 62 people. Thirteen of them are still hospitalized, including a minor in “intensive care”.
Structural failure
Search operations, carried out with the help of rescue dogs, were suspended late Monday morning. The accident occurred on Sunday around 2:18 p.m. local time (10:18 p.m. Swiss), probably due to a structural failure, authorities said in a press release. The Santa Cruz parish church with brick walls and tin roof, built around forty years ago, was renovated in 2010.
“What the priest said is that at the time of the blessing, he heard a rod (of the roof) give way,” Roberto Chavez, civil protection coordinator for the state of Tamaulipas, told the press. “We are living in a very difficult moment,” local diocese bishop José Armando Alvarez said in a video posted on social media.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday offered his condolences to the relatives of the victims. The tragedy aroused “a lot of solidarity from the people,” he said during his daily press conference.
“Pain for families”
Located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Ciudad Madero has just over 200,000 inhabitants. In 2017, a similar tragedy occurred when a church in the state of Puebla (center) collapsed during a baptism following an earthquake. Eleven people from the same family had died, including the baby who was to be baptized.
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