"The curtains stuck to the ceiling": how I survived the San Juanico disaster, the explosion that left 650 dead in Mexico in 1984

Image source, APAuthor, Author's Title, BBC News MundoPublication date 1 hourReading time: 7 minIt is 5:30 in the morning on November 19, 1984. Virginia Martínez Téllez, 13 years old, is sleeping next to her family in San Juan Ixhuatepec, today commonly known as San Juanico, a suburb in the north of Mexico City. Neither she nor the other roughly 40,000 inhabitants of the place, who live in houses made mostly of concrete and wood, are aware of a massive gas leak that will change their lives forever. The young girl lives approximately one kilometer from a gas storage and distribution plant owned by Pemex, the state oil company. That is why she is used to seeing the flare stack, where excess gas is burned, 24 hours a day. It is part of her daily landscape. But what she will see that dawn upon waking will be something else."It looked like a war zone," she recalls in an interview with the BBC's Witness History. Skip Most read and continue readingMost readEnd of Most readWhat became known as the San Juanico disaster left more than 650 dead and 2,500 injured, as well as some 25,000 people homeless. Before the disasterVirginia lived with her six siblings, her grandmother and her parents."It was a town of very hard-working people with limited resources, lower middle class," she says. She was about to turn 14 at the time of the disaster that would become the deadliest gas explosion in Mexico and the world. During the previous 20 years, the suburbs of San Juanico had grown considerably, so that some homes were located just 130 meters from the plant. The complex had six enormous spherical storage tanks and dozens of cylindrical containers, popularly known as "sausages." All of that would be blown to pieces that dawn. Image source, APCaption, San Juanico was at that time a town of 40,000 inhabitants, most of whom lived in houses of concrete and wood. The explosion"It was a very strong explosion. I got out of bed and saw that the curtains were stuck to the ceiling, like Marilyn Monroe's skirt lifted by the wind," Virginia recalls."I immediately looked outside and everything was orange, with blue tones and shapes that looked like tongues of fire.""I remember the light, the noise, the chaos. An overwhelming heat and the terror of thinking that at any moment it could detonate again," she recounts. The gas leak in one of the tanks formed a vapor cloud. The cloud ignited, causing a flare-up and an explosion. The fire spread from an exploding tanker truck, triggering a chain reaction through the storage facilities, whose tanks normally held 80,000 barrels of liquefied gas. Shortly before dawn, a column of fire rose more than a kilometer and a half into the night sky, covering this suburb of precarious dwellings with a rain of burning debris."There was a huge whirlwind in which a multitude of particles were flying. I thought they were sheets of metal," Virginia remembers. It was reported that the reddish glow could be seen from the other end of the capital. Virginia could feel the air compressing inside her room. "It's like when you dive underwater: the deeper you go, the more pressure you feel." The escape"Wake up, let's go! We have to leave! Put on your shoes, the first ones you find!" Virginia's mother told her and her siblings that dawn."My father tried to open the door, but as soon as he touched the metal handle he burned himself. He had to use a cloth to protect himself and be able to open the door of the house." When they managed to get out of the house they felt a scorching heat. "It was as if we were in the tropics." Many of their neighbors were trying to escape barefoot and in their underwear. The whole family ran toward what they hoped would be their salvation from the fire and the thermal radiation: their old car, which needed to be pushed to start. Everyone squeezed inside. Their father drove through a haze of smoke, but construction and paving works made the roads even more difficult to navigate. Virginia looked out the window."There was so much chaos. People running, screaming, going up the hill like ants. They were heading to Zacatenco hill to reach what was then the Federal District. Everything was grayish, very black, as if there were a thick fog. I suppose it was the residue from the first explosion," she says. Image source, APThen they took the Mexico-Pachuca highway toward Indios Verdes and, approximately one kilometer from San Juanico, the second explosion occurred."I heard the boom. I looked back and saw a huge, huge column of fire. I was so afraid that San Juanico no longer existed." The inferno spread quickly through the neighborhood. The fire remained out of control for seven hours."I was the third of seven siblings. I had two older sisters. They tried to comfort us and hug us. In turn, we tried to calm and look after the youngest ones," Virginia narrates."My parents, of course, were also terrified, but my father stayed calm to ensure our safety and get us out of there as soon as possible." More explosions occurred, known as Bleves (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions), as other storage tanks ruptured. While Virginia and her family fled toward the east of Mexico City, thousands of emergency workers were heading toward the epicenter of the disaster. Throughout the day, 3,000 police officers, supported by soldiers and Red Cross volunteers, rescued more and more victims from the ruins. The city's medical resources were overwhelmed. The family arrived safe and sound at the home of some relatives and watched the television news in horror as the magnitude of the devastation was revealed."There were lost children, people separated from their families, and others who had not managed to escape and had remained holding on to one another," Virginia says. Her family wanted to return home, but it was not that simple. Image source, APCaption, The houses near the plant were left uninhabitable. A ghost city"It was a ghost town, cordoned off. The Mexican army would not let us in. My father, along with some nephews, managed to get in first. Later I learned that they had bribed some guards. That way they were able to get in on foot to feed the pets that had been left in the house," she recalls. They were the first to see all the desolation that was there. Virginia did not return until December. The house of her childhood had become a nightmare. Two mass graves were dug to bury hundreds of victims."It was very sad. Something inside me broke. I understood the magnitude of the disaster. It looked like a war zone. There was a smell that, to this day, I cannot describe. It was something completely different. My parents said it smelled like burnt flesh." There were also visible signs of the extreme heat and the force of the successive explosions that razed the district. One of the storage tanks was thrown four blocks away."I saw destroyed houses along the Río de los Remedios, homes that belonged to schoolmates," she says."I also looked toward the hill and saw where the projectiles had fallen. Fragments of the storage spheres, or of those long containers we called 'sausages,' had fallen on the houses," she says. Image source, APCaption, The disaster left 650 dead and 2,500 injured, while more than 25,000 people lost their homes. Pemex accepted responsibility for the disaster and agreed to compensate the victims. Health and safety experts concluded that the tragedy was the result of a combination of technical failures, safety deficiencies and poor urban planning. For Virginia, the San Juanico explosion continues to affect her life more than 40 years later:"I am hypersensitive to the smell of gas. I get very agitated and go on maximum alert when something like that happens," she says."It affects me deeply. In fact, I developed a kind of anxiety; what today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder." That, unfortunately, was not the only explosion linked to the Mexican state oil company. Similar industrial accidents have occurred in other parts of the country, such as Guadalajara, Reynosa, San Martín Texmelucan, Coatzacoalcos and Tlahuelilpan. But San Juanico remains the deadliest. *With information from the BBC's Witness History podcast. Click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo. Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday. And remember you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.