The structure’s collapse was caught on MC presidential candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez’s livestream of the event. Photo: YouTube

By KELIN DILLON

A series of unexpectedly strong winds caused a structure at the Citizen Movement (MC) rally in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León to collapse on the evening of Wednesday, May 22, resulting in the deaths of nine attendees and injuries to another 121 individuals.

The incident occurred just as MC presidential candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez took the microphone at the close of the event when a strong wind caused the metal stage constructed at the El Obispo Baseball Field to cave in shortly after 8 p.m.

While hundreds of attendees ran away safely from the structure’s collapse, dozens were reportedly trapped underneath the metal wreckage. All MC candidates – including Máynez, Nuevo León Senate candidate Martha Herrera and San Pedro Garza García mayoral candidate Lorenia Canavati – escaped unharmed.

“I am fine and in communication with state authorities to follow up on what happened,” Máynez wrote on social media after the incident. “The only important thing right now is to care for the victims.

For his part, Nuevo León Governor Samuel García said that the incident “hurts us a lot, we are dismayed.”

“This yesterday took us by surprise, a storm was not even predicted in the city, and it was so fast that in the particular case of this closure, the staff and those of us who assisted could not believe that it happened,” said García.

However, despite García’s claims that the Nuevo León government was unaware of the meteorological event, the National Water Commission (Conagua) had reportedly issued a weather alert for the region predicting wind with gusts between 50 to 70 kilometers per hour, as well as the potential formation of tornadoes, before 3 p.m. that same day.

García also went on to say that the Nuevo León Secretariat of Health would pay for citizens’ surgeries, medications, treatments and psychological care related to Wednesday’s collapse, while the State Prosecutor’s Office is in charge of delivering the bodies of the deceased back to their families.

Meanwhile, during his daily morning press conference on Thursday, May 23, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) expressed his sympathies to those affected by the accident, saying that “we send our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives, we are very sorry.” 

“We express our solidarity with the MC, with its leaders, we know that they are not to blame,” concluded the federal executive. “In any case, the authorities have to investigate, but more than talking about it, we have to care for the injured.”