Thursday, May 23, 2024, 09:38
Nine people have died and fifty remain injured after a stage collapsed during a campaign event by the opposition Citizen Movement in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. The collapse of the flooring occurred due to strong gusts of wind in the middle of a sudden storm. As can be seen in some videos, the towers and several panels of the installation fell on the public. The main candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynar, and the candidate for mayor of the city of San Pedro, Lorenia Cannavati, were able to save their lives by running off the stage.
The events occurred around six in the afternoon (midnight in Spain) while the opposition party was holding a campaign event. Mexico holds elections on June 2. The Citizen Movement had built a stage several meters high, crowned by a large screen that also collapsed on the spectators. Some of them had come to see a concert by a popular music group that was intended to close the rally.
Among the nine deceased is a child, as reported by the Nuevo León governor’s office, while eight of the fifty injured are in very serious condition. Some of them are members of candidate Álvarez Máynar’s team, on whom debris from the stage fell. «Everything happened so quickly that it was impossible to escape. We only saw that everything was moving and, suddenly, the awning and the pieces of the stage fell on the people,” a witness told local media. Immediately after the collapse, dozens of ambulances went to the scene, the El Obispo baseball stadium, and evacuated the victims to hospitals in the area and in the capital, Monterrey. For several minutes it was feared that some spectators had been trapped under the structure.
«Instinct or logic alerted me that the stage could be raised. First I saw that the battery of the music group that had to play at the event was going to blow up. I told Lorena Cannavati, who I don’t even think she had realized, and then we ran and jumped off the stage. “We hit our heads, but we were saved,” Álvarez Máynar himself described the incident. In his opinion, it was an “atypical” accident. «On the way to the hospital we saw fallen trees. In a time as short as five minutes there is no storm like that,” said the candidate, who assured that the event had all the permits and that the structure had been previously reviewed by Civil Protection. “I am sad and dismayed,” confessed the opposition leader, whose party has canceled the rallies planned for the next few hours. “It has been a tragedy.”
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as the country’s other electoral candidates have shown their solidarity with Álvarez Máynar, who precisely on May 5 was involved in a similar accident in La Huasteca park, also in Nueva León . Another storm caused several awnings and metal structures that supported the platform to fall during a meeting with hundreds of supporters, although on that occasion no injuries were reported. Claudia Sheinbaum, from the Morena party and former governor of Mexico City, has announced that this Thursday she is canceling a rally that she had planned to offer in Monterrey.
The Mexican electoral campaign is turning out to be especially hectic. Cartel violence has been especially present. Several candidates, especially for mayor, have been murdered and at least two hundred candidates have decided to withdraw due to fear of attacks. The Government plans to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers during election day to prevent possible attacks by drug traffickers.
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