On January 30th, thousands of men and women went to work at Mexico’s state-run oil giant Pemex, not knowing the disaster that would soon occur. That very afternoon, an explosion destroyed the Pemex offices, leaving disastrous results with 32 people killed, over 100 injured, including around 50 people who remain to be hospitalized. The Pemex headquarters are made up of many buildings, one of the buildings was a 54- story tower that is almost 700 feet tall, the annex where the explosion occurred just happened to be adjacent to that tower. Emilio Lozoya, the chief of Pemex revealed all this information at a news conference on February 1st. Lozoya was asked if he believed that Pemex, a company that is not only powerful, but frequently criticized, was the target of a bombing.
Lozoya refused to answer the question at hand, leaving many suspicious about how much Lozoya really knows. Lozoya says that ‘experts from Mexico and abroad were investigating the scene to determine the cause’. Lozoya also reported that some of the witnesses have reported smelling the strong odor of gas after the blast went off.
The investigation is a complicated one and Lozoya even said that it “cannot be explained in a few hours.” Lozoya says that the priority is providing the victims’ families with support and rescuing anyone who may be trapped. Joaquin Borrell Valenzuela, an attorney for the Pemex comptrollers office,who was in the courtyard outside the building at the time of the explosion, said that “People were screaming. … You could see pieces of the wall falling to the ground.” Paramedics arrived quickly and started to pull people from the rubble and aftermath. Although all this happened, Lozoya says that ‘The oil company’s production capabilities have not been harmed, and operations and oil production will continue Friday as normal.’
– Loveday
