Owners of Day Care That Burned Quit Government Jobs

HERMOSILLO, Mexico (CNN) -- Two of the owners of the day-care center that burned Friday, killing 44 children, have resigned jobs they had with the government, they told reporters Tuesday.

Antonio Salido, a functionary for the state of Sonora's secretary of urban infrastructure, and Alfonso Escalante, a sub-secretary of livestock farming, said they were resigning so that there would be no obstruction in the investigation into the cause of the fire.

Salido, speaking for both men, told reporters they had not used their government positions to obtain the day-care concession.

"We want to show you how deeply we feel about what happened in the terrible accident that occurred at ABC Day Care," he said.

"It passed the security measures and norms of operation required by the Mexican Institute of Social Security," he said, referring to the governmental organization that oversees the state-run school.

He noted that the institute's director, Daniel Karam Toumeh, said Sunday that the building had passed an inspection on May 26.

Abel Murrieta Gutierrez, the attorney general of Sonora, told CNN en Español that the investigation would not be affected by the fact that two of the owners worked for the government.

"It doesn't matter to us if they were or were not functionaries," he said.

Relatives of the victims and people seeking better security for day-care centers are planning to march Wednesday evening from near the day-care center to the government center.

The fire started Friday afternoon in an air-conditioning unit located in an adjacent warehouse, the attorney general of Sonora said Monday. Investigators are trying to determine whether the fire was caused by an overheated motor or deficiencies in its installation, Abel Murrieta Gutierrez said.

The fire then moved toward bookshelves on a wall shared with the building housing the center, which held 141 children and day-care workers, he added.

The two buildings also shared a roof, which contained a false bottom made of polyurethane. That overheated, emitting toxic fumes, he said.

As of Tuesday, 22 children remained hospitalized with burns.

One of them was the daughter of Raul Alvarez, who prayed Tuesday at an improvised altar outside the Children's Hospital in Hermosillo. "We went to see her this morning, and she was stable, the little girl," he said.

Hermosillo is the capital of the state of Sonora, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of the U.S. border in northwestern Mexico.

It has no hospitals that specialize in burns, so doctors here have been working to stabilize those most badly burned before sending them on for treatment in other cities.

"The most important thing is not so much the burn, but stabilizing them, making sure the kidney is functioning, the lung is functioning, the liver is functioning, the brain is functioning," said Raymond Lopez, Sonora's health secretary.

Watch a town deep in shock »

This Honestly Breaks My Heart...

The number of children who have died as a result of this daycare center fire has risen to 41... So tragic. Is this a result of arson?

HERMOSILLO, Mexico (CNN) -- Parents of the children trapped in a burning Mexican day care center rammed their vehicles into the building to try to free the trapped children, witnesses told CNN.

At least 41 children died when flames engulfed the building on Friday, Mexico's Public Health Ministry said Sunday. Dozens more are in hospitals in Mexico and the United States.

Neighbors described parents arriving at the day care center completely desperate, seeing it engulfed in flames and knowing there was no way to get the children out, CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported from the scene. They say they could hear the cries of the children and the screams of their parents.

The building had two doors, but one was padlocked shut, officials said. Windows were too high for the children to reach.
Watch parents gather at site of fire »

"When we went out and ran towards the nursery, teachers already had many children outside, those who could walk properly," said one man at the scene, who did not give his name.

"A pickup truck broke down the walls. The dad of one of the kids broke down one of the walls with his car driving in reverse, and that helped us a bit," he said.

One mother waited hours for information about her son, she said.

"They didn't tell us anything, nothing until like 6 p.m.," she said, when she was finally told her son was at Chavez Hospital.

"We went there and we saw that he was badly burned, 75 percent of his body was burned." The woman said they operated on the boy, but he died.

The cause of Friday's blaze remains unknown, but investigators concluded that the fire did not start inside the ABC Day Care, said Eduardo Bours, the governor of Sonora state.

As of Saturday night, at least 23 children remained hospitalized, 15 of them in critical condition, Sonora spokesman Daniel Duran told CNN. Another 10 children had been transported to other hospitals: eight to Guadalajara, one to Ciudad Obregon, and two to Sacramento, California.

A team of 29 medical experts in Hermosillo was deciding whether any more victims would be moved to the Shriners Hospital in Sacramento, or elsewhere.
In addition, six adults were injured, Duran said.

"Without a doubt this is the worst disaster we've had," Bours told CNN.

President Felipe Calderon traveled to Hermosillo on Saturday.

The president arrived with Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont and Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova to get firsthand updates from doctors and investigators, the state news agency Notimex reported.

Calderon ordered the nation's attorney general to investigate the blaze.

Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation and not burns, Bours said. But the fire was serious enough for the roof to collapse, he added.

At the time of the blaze, 142 children were inside the ABC Day Care. The day care is for children ages 2 to 4, but Bours confirmed that children even younger were among the victims.

All the children at the center had been accounted for by Saturday evening, Bours said.

A severely burned 3-year-old girl arrived Saturday at the Sacramento hospital -- where pediatric burn treatment is a specialty -- and was in critical condition, according to Dr. Tina Palmieri, assistant chief of the burn unit.

The child was burned over 80 percent of her body, the doctor told reporters. She said the hospital normally can save just over half of the children with burns that severe.

In Hermosillo, a large crowd gathered outside of the emergency entrance of the city's general hospital and many people consoled each other, video from the scene showed.

"They told me that this happened in a matter of five minutes," Hermosillo Mayor Ernesto Gandara told reporters after surveying the scene.

27 Children Die In Mexico Daycare Center Fire

HERMOSILLO, Mexico (CNN) -- Twenty-seven children were killed and more than 100 others were injured Friday when their daycare center caught fire in the northwestern state of Sonora, the local governor said, citing figures from the state attorney's office.

The victims were from one to 5 years old, said Sonora Governo Eduardo Bours Castelo.

The fire appeared to have started at 3 p.m. (2200 GMT) in a warehouse next door and spread to the state-run institution, news reports said.

By then, many children had already been picked up by their parents from the one-story building, but others came after the blaze had been put out. As they came upon the scene, some screamed their children's names and others fainted.