The death toll from a fire at a day-care center rose to 44 on Monday, as authorities promised their investigation would be unaffected by family ties between a co-owner and the wife of President Felipe Calderon.

Officials in the northern border state of Sonora said three more children had died as a result of Friday’s fast-moving blaze, during which rescuers found only one working door.

The event has raised questions about official oversight of the preschool, known as ABC. The facility, a converted warehouse, was run privately but under authority of the Mexican Social Security Institute, which operates more than 1,500 day-care centers around Mexico for 223,000 children.

State and federal officials said Monday that they would investigate fully, no matter the owners’ family and political ties. Those links were a growing source of controversy after it emerged that one of the owners, Marcia Gomez del Campo Tonella, is related to First Lady Margarita Zavala, and that Gomez del Campo’s husband is a top public-works official in the Sonora state government. The husband of a second owner is also a ranking Sonora official.
- LA TIMES

We have absolutely nothing to hide and nobody to protect. There is no relationship between one thing and the other.”
- Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours

The director of the Social Security Institute, said the daycare center underwent a municipal safety inspection on May 26 and was found to have emergency exits, an evacuation route, and fire extinguishers, however witnesses claim there was only a narrow yellow door which was locked with a key, the only other exit, apparently runs off of a computer allowing it to open and close and was disabled due to the loss of electricity with the fire.

There [was] only one small door working, two other exits were hard to spot and had been locked.

-Abel Murrieta- state prosecutor

Desperate neighbors and rescue workers were forced to initially use a sledge hammer to create one small clearance, which was then assisted by another man who used his truck to ram three large holes in the cement block industrialized wall allowing brave volunteers passage to the children.

Officials said 123 children were inside at the time, along with a still-unspecified number of adults. Unofficially it has been stated their were only six adults working in the center at the time of the fire.