Fireworks stored by a Mexico State church kill 10 at a patronal feast

At least ten people died and 64 were injured when pyrotechnic material exploded on Saturday night next to the parish of Nuestra Señora de la Luz in Santa María Canchesdá, a community in the municipality of Temascalcingo in the State of Mexico. The state government gave those figures on Sunday. The Mexico State Attorney General's Office has opened an investigation. The cause has not been determined.

Hundreds of residents had gathered for the patronal feast of the Virgin of the Light. The town sits about 160 kilometres northwest of Mexico City and has a municipal population of around 66,000. Local videos show people walking through smoke and rubble after the blast, calling for help. The fire moved across the plaza. A wall came down and buried people nearest the store-room.

Early accounts from state civil protection differed on the mechanism. Adrián Hernández Romero, the state's civil protection director, first said the slab over a room beside the temple of Santa María Canchesdá collapsed after fireworks stored there went off, crushing those inside. Eight people died at the scene, he said, and another died at the General Hospital of Atlacomulco. Later state figures raised the dead to ten and the injured to 64. Among the wounded are two priests of the parish, Fernando Chávez Cruz and Javier Sánchez Montes, according to Adolfo Miguel Castaño Fonseca, bishop of the Diocese of Atlacomulco.

Residents said the programme included the burning of a traditional toro, a cane frame packed with fireworks and carried through the crowd. Press accounts placed the first detonations around 8:25 to 9:00 p.m. on 5 September. An early handwritten list circulating locally named injured patients taken to Atlacomulco, including Dante Domínguez Sánchez, 8, and Ximena Guadalupe González, 12, along with adults Saúl Sánchez Romero, 52, Modesto Juan Hernández García, 66, and others. That list has not been independently confirmed by the state prosecutor.

Fireworks accidents are a known pattern in Mexican religious festivals. Almost four years ago a blast in a village in Huejutla, Hidalgo, injured 17 people. Storage next to a church during a packed feast is common practice in many towns because the parish is the centre of the calendar and the only large enclosed space. The State of Mexico has a long artisan fireworks industry, with Tultepec as the best-known hub. Regulation exists on paper. Enforcement at a Saturday night feast in a small community is another matter.

Civil protection and state security police sealed the site on Sunday. Residents prayed in the damaged plaza. The investigation will have to establish who bought the material, who stored it against the church wall, whether the room was licensed, and whether the toro or the stored cache set off the chain. Until those points are fixed, the official account stops at the numbers: ten dead, 64 hurt, two priests among them, a wall down, a feast that ended in the dark.

Patronal fireworks will not disappear from the Mexican calendar after one night in Temascalcingo. The question for the prosecutor is narrower. A room used as a magazine sat against a parish where children and priests stood in the open. That is a fact that does not depend on a finding of intent. It is the fact that killed ten people.