Mexico grieves 40 kids killed in day care fire

updated 3:56 p.m. ET June 7, 2009

HERMOSILLO, Mexico - Grieving parents buried their children Sunday after a devastating daycare fire killed 40 infants and toddlers, stunning Mexico and prompting its president to promise a thorough investigation.

Funeral processions drove slowly to churches in the northwestern city of Hermosillo decorated with balloons and flowers.

The family of 2-year-old Maria Magdalena Millan dropped white roses onto her casket and attached a Dora the Explorer balloon to the cross marking her grave at one of the first funerals held Saturday.

"I love you and I don't want to leave you here!" her mother screamed.

President Felipe Calderon arrived in the northwestern Mexican city late Saturday to console the injured. He wished surviving children a speedy recovery and promised families full support from his health ministry and a thorough investigation into the cause of a tragedy that he said all Mexicans felt.

"I want to say to the mothers and fathers of the little ones who died that we share their profound sadness," Calderon said earlier in the day.

Smoke inhalation blamed
The death toll rose to 40 on Sunday after two children died in hospitals, according to Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez Vucovich. Most of the victims had died of organ collapse caused by smoke inhalation, he said.

The fire initially spread from an adjoining tire and car warehouse to the roof of the ABC day care and sent flames raining down on the young children. Fire officials still don't know how it started.

Delfina Ruelas, 60, said her grandchild German Leon died of his burns Saturday, three days after his fourth birthday.

Ruelas and her husband saw televised reports about the fire Friday and rushed over.

Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images Relatives of victims cry at the cemetery during the funeral of one of the 38 children who died in a June 6 fire in a day care center in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico.

"I thought he wasn't that burned and that we would find him OK, but he was very burned," said Ruelas, dissolving into tears outside the morgue in the northern city of Hermosillo, where she waited with 30 other relatives. "They operated on him yesterday, and he held on, but today he couldn't."

Firefighters carried injured children out the front door — the building's only working exit — and through large holes that a civilian knocked into the walls before rescue crews arrived, according to a fire department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the fire.

Francisco Lopez, who works at nearby auto repair shop, said he said he rushed to the scene in his pick-up truck and rammed it in reverse three times against the wall of the day care to break a hole in it.

Building safety questioned
The deaths in Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora with a population of about 560,000, again raised questions about building safety in Mexico. Officials cracked down on code violations last year after a deadly stampede at a nightclub killed 12 and a disco fire nine years ago killed 21. Both clubs were in Mexico City.

An estimated 142 children were in the day care at the time of the fire, ranging from 6 months to 5 years in age, and six staffers who looked after them, Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours said at a news conference.

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