We were just heading out to the beach and saw huge plumes of smoke. Being bien chismosa, we went to check it out, the Mega on Kabah is on fire, huge black piles of smoke coming out! I took some pics, will have them up on my blog in a few minutes. I wouldn't try to drive anywhere near there right now, it's a disaster area and traffic is backed up all around.
Yikes! I could care less about the MEGA, but I hope Costco is OK..... & of'course I hope everyone involved gets out in one piece... I do worry about the firemen, as they dont have the best equipment and have lost their lives in similar situations (ie: Plaza las Americas)
Hmmm.... Since I am against paying to be able to pay again (and often more than Walmart for the same product), and don't have a large family to use the huge quantities Costco sells, I am VERY concerned. And I was there yesterday. The Mega has some items that can't be found in other supers. But I find strange that 2 Commercial Mexicanas get in fire in a few months. What is hidden there? Hard to believe it is carelessness or... arson for renovation twice. I HOPE nobody is harmed. A sunday morning, it is crowded. I don't know at what time it happened.
Just came back from that area (was running in the Parque Kabah). Costco appears unscathed. For a while there were flames shooting out of Mega's east wall (Costco-side) and I was expecting Costco to catch on fire. But it appears that the bomberos were able to save Costco. When I arrived there the parking lots for Costco, Mega and the Parque Kabah were full of civilian onlookers and their cars. There were probably more than 200 people gawking at the fire. Then the cops finally showed up and started clearing the parking lots. They threatened to arrest onlookers. They had tow trucks taking cars away. By the time I was done with my run the parking lots were empty of civilians and only had emergency vehicles in them, and they had police tape up everywhere. One of the radio stations came and reported for a while, until the cops chased them off. They reported that the fire was out of control at just about the same time that the bomberos GOT control of it. When I left Mega was still burning but I could no longer see flames shooting out of the building. And the fire seemed to be over on the western side of the store, away from Costco. The army is there now, with their big guns, chasing off civilians. Kabah is closed in that area. Mega had the best cheese in Cancun. Had.
Hmm. Who would have bailed out RG. My buddy called and he was going from OXXO toward the ball field and had a bird's eye view and was giving me the blow by blow. I am going to ride by in a few minutes to see what it looks like now. He said there was a huge fireball at one point like something really flammable exploded. My woman has, or had I guess, her children's school uniforms in the alteration shop getting some work done. She ran out of time for picking them up yesterday. Bummer.
An hour ago Hubby reported that Kabah was still closed there and that there was still smoke coming from Mega. I did hear a couple of explosions while I was running, but by the time I left the park the flames were dying down. My general impression was that the emergency responders got there a little late, or at least that it took a while to get enough of them on the scene. But then once they were there they handled the situation very well.
Here's the story and pics from Noticaribe... http://www.noticaribe.com.mx/cancun/2008/08/arrasa_mega_incendio_centro_comercial.html We could see the smoke from Isla Blanca, glad to read that there were no injuries.
First rule of web design usability: don't make the user work to see content. So you don't tell them to click a link to see a pic, you just show them the pic. I'm finding it incredibly interesting that the last Comercial Mexicana fire took place on 16-Aug-07, one year and one day ago!!! How weird is that? Not weird I don't think...deliberate I think...
Here's a video news story from Canal10.... [media=youtube]l8gE7yZA3XA[/media] It is weird that it was so close to the date of the last fire, either bad karma or deliberately set. The investigation continues apparently.
If I remember right the last CM fire started while the store was closed. This one seems to have started while it was open. It's hard to imagine someone setting a fire deliberately while the store is open. It's also hard to imagine that two fires taking place one year and one day apart is a coincidence. I have 0% faith that an investigation will turn up anything resembling truth, but we shall see.
