Seven people were killed in the natural gas explosion
The Toronto Star
ONTARIO, Canada — At first, Rick DeMerchant thought somebody had slammed a bunch of patio chairs on the ground.
Instead, the loud bang the Hamiltonian heard from his Mexican resort hotel room Sunday morning was a natural gas explosion that killed seven people, including five Canadians.
DeMerchant, who was spending the last day of his vacation at the Grand Princess Riviera Hotel in the resort city of Playa del Carmen with his wife and two friends, was on his bed when he heard the blast.
His room was about 100 metres from the explosion, he said.
His paramedic friends, Dave Smith and Barb Dubrawski, raced to the scene. DeMerchant and his wife Kathy caught up to their friends at the site of the blast at the Platinum Riviera Lounge.
When they got there, the couples saw blown-out glass and injured people scattered across the lawn.
"There were 14 bodies on the ground," DeMerchant, 35, said in a phone interview Sunday from the hotel lobby.
Smith and Dubrawski, both from Ancaster, Ont., started treating patients while DeMerchant followed and helped them.
Dubrawski checked patients' pulses at that point, and found three who had none, he said.
"Nobody was keeping people off the scene and there were desperate eyes everywhere," DeMerchant wrote in an email to The Spectator later Sunday.
The injuries were terrible, the Hamilton Spectator prepress supervisor said by telephone.
"There was one woman who was burned badly, she was very conscious. She screamed when we put a wet towel on her," DeMerchant said.
DeMerchant said he walked toward the section of the resort where the blast originated to check if there were people in the rubble.
"The ceiling was stripped and the exterior wall was gone," he said. "I was knee-high in rubble."
Then, about 10 minutes after they had been assisting victims, DeMerchant heard a staff member mention a possible secondary explosion.
At this point, he told his wife and Dubrawski to leave while he looked for Smith to alert him to the possible danger. When he turned around, he saw his friend working with two Calgary nurses administering an IV and helping a barely conscious man named Jesus into an ambulance.
"You just want to help anyone in need," DeMerchant said when asked to describe what he was thinking throughout the ordeal. "My concern was of what was going on..."
While the scene was terrible, he was encouraged to see Smith and the two nurses working together, DeMerchant said. "It was great to see the camaraderie ... . How quickly they got all the stuff done."