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Four children dead in weekend Tijuana house fire
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/07/12/news/sandiego/711...
July 11, 2005
By: Associated Press Wire Reports
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) -- A weekend house fire in the border city of Tijuana killed four children between the ages of 3 and 11, firefighters reported
Monday.
The children's mother had apparently left them alone at home while she worked at a local bar. Firefighters responded to the blaze early Saturday, but
were unable to save the children.
Two boys aged 3 and 6, and two girls aged 10 and 11, died in the blaze. The fire apparently broke out while the children were asleep.
A lack of affordable child care for working mothers has contributed to similar tragedies in the past.
On June 23, firefighters rescued two children who had been locked into a house that caught fire.
Neighbors said the mother of the boys, aged 8 and 9, regularly locked them into the house when she left to work at a maquiladora assembly plant.
The boys were placed in the temporary custody of a government child welfare agency.
In November, two three-year-old twins died in a house fire in Tijuana after being left alone when their parents went out to sell tamales on a local
street.
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Fire claimed 4 children huddled in terror
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20050716-9...
Firefighters arrived after cries subsided
By Anna Cearley
July 16, 2005
TIJUANA ? Residents of the dusty, hillside neighborhood of Terrazas del Valle's Segunda Seccion are still reeling from the horror of a house fire that
claimed the lives of four children last weekend while their mother was working a night shift.
"There have been lots of accidents here, and a lot of crime ? but this was the worst we've seen," said Blanca Casta?eda, who lives next door to the
destroyed home of Isabel R?os.
Fire investigators believe the blaze started from a short circuit in an illegal cable used to steal electrical power. Such cables ? known as diablitos
? are often used by impoverished families.
Because the community is so hard to reach, it took firefighters about half an hour to get to the house ? and by then the children's cries for help had
stopped.
Neighbors said R?os couldn't afford to hire a baby sitter, and that she sometimes had to work late at night to make ends meet. Residents said it's
common for single mothers to work odd hours at factories, though others sometimes work at bars.
R?os was unavailable for comment, but neighbors said she wept profusely when she returned to survey the ash-covered site after the Sunday fire, which
broke out around 1 a.m.
"Her eyes were all squeezed shut and her boyfriend held her up as she looked," said Casta?eda, who lives with her husband and son. "People came up to
her to hug her, and she cried out for her children."
Mar?a Elvia Amaya de Hank, wife of Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, said several days after the fire that the city's social services department would
open three child-care centers for the children of parents who work late shifts. She presides over a fundraising committee for the agency.
The state government will donate about $2,000 toward material for R?os to rebuild her home, according to a news release from the state.
Because the community was settled by squatters, public works projects have only recently started arriving here, residents said.
Families keep buckets of water in their homes for washing and cooking. Some have paid for a certificate to get legal electrical connections, but can't
complete the process because of lack of money.
Most families here live on pooled earnings of about $400 a month, neighbors said.
Rafael Carrillo Venegas, an assistant director of operations for the Tijuana fire department, estimated that about 30 percent of the fires in the
eastern part of the city where Terrazas is located are due to illegal cables.
R?os was raising six children, four of them from her relationship with her ex-husband, Casta?eda said. Neighbors said she had a tiny snack stand and
sold knickknacks at swap meets.
Her neighbors said she had cut back on working nights, at the urging of a new boyfriend. But other mothers in the neighborhood said they always tried
to keep an eye on the kids when she wasn't around.
"Before, she would have me go inside the home to make sure they were all in bed," said Ana Fabiola Mart?nez Ram?rez, 23. "That evening, they had been
eating pizza and playing around outside the house."
Two of R?os' children weren't at home because they were with a relative that night, neighbors said. The ones who were in the house, according to
firefighters, were Alexis, 3, Pedro, 6, Andrea, 9, and Nancy, 10.
Neighbors said the house was locked from the inside, but by the time the children were aware of the fire they were apparently unable to reach the door
because of smoke or flames.
The children cried for help as they huddled in the back section of the house where there was no opening.
Neighbors grabbed what little water they had to douse the flames. They managed to open the front door, but were singed by the flames and couldn't go
inside. As the children cried for help in the back of the house, several residents tried to ram a pole through the wall there ? but they were
unsuccessful.
The cries subsided, and the firefighters arrived. The children were found burned in a corner of the home, with their arms draped around one another,
Casta?eda said.
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