(6 Jul 2018) Grieving emergency personnel in the Mexico City suburb of Tultepec carried the caskets of four of their comrades through the town's streets Friday, as authorities investigate whether an attempt to douse burning fireworks with water may have triggered further blasts that killed a total of 24 people.
The four were among seven firefighters, police and civil defense workers killed when they rushed to the scene of the first blast, only to be killed by three subsequent explosions.
Fifty-four people were injured, 41 of whom remain hospitalized.
The town of Tultepec, just north of the capital in Mexico State, is a place already notorious for deadly fireworks accidents that have killed at least 70 people in less than two years.
"That is the life of a fireworks producer," said Angel Guerrero, a local resident who has relatives who work in the dangerous trade. "That's how they make their living. Explosion after explosion, they'll keep on doing the same thing."
A state official told local media that investigators are looking at whether first responders may have contributed to the second wave of blasts by trying to extinguish the initial blaze with water, which reacts with some chemicals used in fireworks.
Whatever happened, it was clear the first responders tried their best and made an enormous sacrifice.
Tultepec, a municipality of about 130,000 people, is famed for small workshops that produce many of the fireworks used on holidays throughout the region.
Luis Felipe Puente, head of Mexico's civil defense agency, said the first workshop that exploded was "clandestine."
But the four workshops destroyed in the blast were located within an area specifically marked out for the production of pyrotechnics. State and federal officials had promised, after earlier disasters, to impose safety restrictions in such areas.
Along the road were brightly painted buildings labeled with "danger" warnings. There was even a guard shack inside a shabby chain link fence.
The first shop that blew up apparently didn't have the required permits issued by the Mexican army to store explosive materials, but that's the case for many of the family-based businesses.
Safety measures at such workshops and markets have been a matter of constant debate in Mexico, where festivals big and small feature rockets and bombs often at close range of spectators, and individuals set off firecrackers in the streets.

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