The Sonora Prosecutor’s Office found apocryphal documents related to the case of the Waldo’s branch that caught fire in Hermosillo and left 24 dead.
Mexico City, December 2 (However).– The State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) of Sonora revealed this Tuesday that found apocryphal documentation related to the branch of one Waldo’s store that caught fire in Hermosillo y left at least 24 dead and several injured. In addition, he announced that they are close to concluding the analysis to determine the causes of the tragedy. After more than a month, there are no detainees for this incident.
“Among the most relevant findings so far, the use of apocryphal documentation has been identified, as well as a particular document that was used to carry out official procedures and whose content does not coincide with reality,” said the Attorney General of Sonora, Gustavo Salas, regarding Waldo’s investigation progress.
However, the Prosecutor did not provide further details about the findings. What he did say was that it has culminated in “work focused on establishing, based on scientific evidence, the mechanics of the events and circumstances that caused the incident.” They have also delivered to the Public Ministry “various expert opinions establishing the root cause of the incident.”
Message from Attorney General Gustavo Salas on Waldos investigation progress pic.twitter.com/lgDV9pBgyr
— Sonora Prosecutor’s Office (@fgjesonora) December 2, 2025
But Salas assured that they are still working on the file of the chromatographic analysis carried out on the fluid used as the transformer’s coolant, in order to detect and diagnose the gases dissolved in said material, a study that was carried out by a specialized laboratory in the State of Mexico, which on November 26 was delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office.
“In this context, we are only waiting for the expert opinion that must be rendered by the Mexican College of Professionals in Risk Management and Civil Protection AC, so that once the last of the opinions is available, we can proceed to methodologically analyze and contrast all of them. It will allow us to determine the origin, causes and conditions that generated the events that are being investigated today,” the Sonoran Prosecutor.
After a month without arrests due to the tragedy, Salas explained that they have interviewed and have testified more than a dozen people linked to the operation of the commercial establishment, and they have already collected from the MP various information consisting of “23 documents of a legal and regulatory nature: articles of incorporation of the company, opinions of the fire-fighting system devices and PC of the damaged branch, plans of the property and other documents of vital importance.”
“Various and former public servants from the three levels of government have been interviewed and declared that the damaged branch was in operation at the same time as their management. Four of these former public servants who had not been located were already required to give their statement to the MP, to whom others will also join in the coming days,” he explained.
The Sonora Prosecutor stated that they are “aware and deeply concerned” about achieving the results in the shortest possible time that will allow the investigation to be successfully concluded. “And we know of the claim and social demand to deepen this investigation in the shortest possible time, however, the magnitude of the event, the losses caused and the damage suffered by the direct and indirect victims force us to act carefully and decisively,” he concluded.
He also stated, in response to questions, that, since the tragedy occurred, the Sonora MP and his assistants “have not stopped acting for a single day in the investigation of the incident” so that “tomorrow partiality cannot be invoked,” and that the Prosecutor’s version can stand alone before the courts.
“Even this Prosecutor’s Office has deployed personnel in entities such as Chihuahua, Mexico City, Nuevo León, State of Mexico and Baja California, in order to carry out various procedures and coordination with different authorities,” Salas concluded.
The fire that occurred on Saturday, November 1 at a Waldo’s store located in the center of Hermosillo, Sonora, left at least 24 people dead and 11 injured. Among the victims there are minors.
The authorities have announced that the store has been operating since 2021 without an authorized internal Civil Protection program.
One day after the fire, the Secretary of the Government of Sonora, Adolfo Salazar Razo, instructed the Waldo’s self-service store chain to close the 68 branches that operate in the state, to undergo a thorough review, after the fire in Hermosillo.
The week following the fire, the Governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo, asked Armando Castañeda Sánchez, head of Civil Protection (PC) of the state, to temporarily separate from his position, while the investigations are carried out, with the purpose that the official is not “judge and party.”
Although the cause of the tragedy has not yet been determined, the Sonora Prosecutor’s Office announced that no indication has been detected that the fire was intentional, so “the working hypothesis is that the event was accidental,” although they did not rule out “any controversial point or existing edge.”