The incident is being investigated by authorities, who have found no evidence that it was intentionally caused. The 24th victim was 80-year-old Marco Segundo Reyes, a store packer. His daughter, Dulce Segundo, acknowledged that the city center is old and lacks maintenance. "The truth is that the Center is very old, they have to work a lot on its maintenance so that another tragedy does not happen again, we no longer want more misfortunes," she said. Ensuring safety Carlos Roberto Faz Gutiérrez, president of the Board of Trustees for Works in the Historical and Commercial Center of Hermosillo, stated that merchants are focused on addressing the urgent to guarantee the safety of their customers. "(We want) to make an exhortation to all of us who are dedicated to commerce, products, and services, to start with the basics: signage and fire extinguishers, to approach the Civil Protection authorities to get ahead and prevent a tragedy like this from happening again," assured the merchant leader. After the tragedy, the governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo Montaño, and the mayor of Hermosillo, Antonio Aztiazarán Gutiérrez, announced the dismissal of the heads of State and Municipal Civil Protection, so as not to hinder the investigations; in addition, the Attorney General said he will open criminal, civil, and administrative proceedings against individuals and officials from the State, Municipality, and Federation. EFE A week after the fire in a Waldo's chain store in the center of Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, which has left 24 dead, family members of victims and survivors maintain their demand for justice, amid the fear that a new disaster may occur as they assure that several buildings near the scene of the incident do not have a maintenance plan for their facilities. Eusebio Arias, uncle of 20-year-old Joanna Hernández, a student and cashier at the store who died in the fire, accused the lack of maintenance in the power supply of having caused the explosion. "We want answers, we have obsolete, very old businesses that need maintenance, those of us who walk the streets of Hermosillo know it and in other cities too," he told Efe. The relative considered that "it is the responsibility of the government, the store, and the personnel in charge of the electrical system, due to the lack of maintenance it overheated and exploded, it is the responsibility of the company, also of the CFE (Federal Electricity Commission)". So far, 24 people have died in the fire and 14 more have been injured, which caused hundreds of people to march through the streets of the Historic Center of Hermosillo mid-week to demand justice for the victims of the incident from the authorities. Fear of another tragedy Amid the pain, family members of the victims have warned that this lack of maintenance in the electrical installations in the buildings of the Historic Center of Hermosillo could cause a new tragedy like the one from a week ago. Ignacio Peinado Luna, leader of the Union of Users of Hermosillo, dedicated to addressing public service problems, warned that this is the year with the most reports, blackouts, and accidents due to lack of maintenance in the CFE infrastructure. "Without a doubt, there is no history like past summers, like this 2025 which has been catastrophic, (we have) a CFE absolutely overwhelmed by the negligence and omission of not giving maintenance to the distribution system of equipment, stations, transformers," he recounted. He assured that it is of vital importance to maintain all this equipment, however, they have been abandoned and unfortunately during the summer "a countless number of transformers have been damaged and broken down, with very serious collateral damage." According to the official report, on Saturday, November 1st, around 3:00 p.m. local time, after several power outages in the Centro neighborhood of Hermosillo, the power transformer in the Waldo's store exploded, leaving 24 people dead and 14 injured. The store was full of customers due to the payday and purchases for Mexico's Day of the Dead.
