University Daily Kansan / Thursdav. April 23. 1992
INTERNATIONAL
13
Ten sewer explosions rock Guadalajara, kill 184 people
The Associated Press
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A series of explosions in the sewer system ripped open streets, flattened buildings and hurled trucks and cars in the air in Mexico's second-largest city yesterday. Witnesses said 184 bodies had been recovered, and 600 people were reported injured.
A statement by Pemex, Mexico's state oil monopoly, said the explosions were caused by volatile liquid hexane that had leaked into the sewers. The hexane was leaked by a private cooking oil company, La Central, which used it to extract edible oils from seeds, Pemex said.
The federal government sent the army to keep order in the city of 3 million, where telephone, electricity and water services had been cut. Residents said they had complained about a gas smell for more than a day, but were told everything was under control.
At least nine explosions beginning at 11:30 a.m. blasted enormous craters and left jagged trenches up to a mile long in Gante Avenue and other streets in the Reforma district of southeastern Guadalajara. About 1,000 buildings were damaged, many heavily.
About five hours later, another explosion of undetermined force was reported about three miles from the site of the original blasts.
By last evening both the government and the Mexican Red Cross ceased making any references to the death toll. Journalists in the area where the dead were being taken said they counted 184 bodies before being forced out by police. The Red Cross had earlier said at least 100 were dead.
Salvador Aguila Lopez, a fruit vendor, said he was unloading a truck Tuesday morning when he felt something like a rumble and then the street blew up. A car across the street that had had a baby inside landed upside down on a pile of rubble, he said.
"We found the baby on the roof of that two-story house," he said. "It must have been a miracle. We don't know or we cannot figure out how the baby got there — alive."
Some residents of the blue-collar neighborhood dug feverishly in rubble with picks and axes for neighbors. At least 700 rescue workers were searching for victims.
The mother was found in the beauty shop across the street, half-buried by rubble, said Luis Alberto Ruvalcaba,
SOURCE: Mexican Embassy
Knight-Ridder Tribune News
a neighbor. She was alive, too, Ruvalcaba said, "probably with broken legs."
Residents of the area had complained since Tuesday of nauseating, eye and nose-stinging gases escaping from sewer ducts. Policeman Martin Bonales said he had called government agencies to complain but was told everything was under control.
INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Prague expels German soccer tans
Drunken German soccer fans rampaged yesterday through Prague's Wenceslas Square, breaking windows and throwing bottles, police said. Twenty-seven were later expelled from the country, a report said.
The hooligans were among several thousand Germans arriving in Prague for a soccer match between Czechoslovakia and Germany later in the day.
The CSTK news agency said that 27 Germans had been expelled after the melee and will not be allowed to re-enter the country for a year.
Prague police drove cars into the square to disperse the crowd of about 700. Some fans and bystanders were injured, and some Germans were arrested, but police could not give figures.
"They were very young and very drunk," said one policeman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Beijing
Kentucky Fried to expand in China
Kentucky Fried Chicken, the first Western fast food chain in China, plants to open more restaurants in other cities following its success in Beijing and Shanghai, an official report said yesterday.
The announcement came one day before McDonald's was scheduled to open its first restaurant in Beijing. McDonald's opened its first outlet in China two years ago in Shenzhen.
Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first outlet in Beijing in 1987 and quickly opened four more in the capital. A Chinese report said the company planned to expand to 10 outlets in Shanghai, China's most populous city.
Kentucky Fried Chicken's first Beijing restaurant, the world's largest, has 700 seats and serves 40,000 people each week, company representative Richard Detwiler said.
THURSDAY APRIL 23
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CNN Correspondent PETER ARNETT THE PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW
The issues of news control and censorship are as alive today as they were when the
First Amendment was written 200 years ago. Hear the struggle for the public's right to know from a reporter who has covered 17 wars in the last 30 years.
When Arab terrorists hijacked a TWA jet airliner in 1985, CBS correspondent Terry Smith recalled, "it seemed somehow perfectly normal to find Arnett already on the scene when I arrived. Or to bump into him in Tel Aviv during the Yom Kippur War... He's the classic man of action. He's everywhere. In Vietnam if you ever got caught up in a firefight and Arnett wasn't already there, he would be along shortly."
Thursday, April 23 1992 Allen Field House 8:00 p.m. Free Lecture Open to Public
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