UPDATE: Resort explosion
Posted Nov 16, 2010 06:09:24 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – Mexico’s state prosecutor says a resort hit by an explosion Sunday, killing five Canadians, initially tried to bar him and other investigators from the site.
The official says the Mexican army eventually had to escort the investigators onto the grounds.
Mexican government experts are now discounting the theory that natural gases from nearby mangroves were trapped under the hotel and ignited.
One says if that were the case, the entire Yucatan peninsula would be in danger of exploding or would have already blown.
Instead officials are looking at whether a broken sewer line led to a buildup of methane gases, or whether propane or methane used in the hotel could be at fault.
Elgin Barron of Guelph was among those who were killed.
Barron worked at COM DEV in Cambridge for the last 14 years.
Officials had previously suggested swamp gases produced by rotting vegetable matter trapped beneath the hotel’s ground floor triggered Sunday’s explosion.
The governor of southeastern Quintana Roo state where the Grand Riviera Princess hotel is located says an initial investigation points to the blast probably being triggered by a broken sewage line that led to a buildup of methane gas in the foundation.
