Firefighters Battle Inferno

Pumping water and building walls of mud and sand, firefighters struggled in vain Tuesday to extinguish flames at a fuel storage complex where three oil tanks exploded.

An oil worker and a fireman died of burns from the blaze, which turned 4.2 million gallons of fuel into a tower of black smoke over this industrial suburb north of Mexico City.

The tanks exploded Monday afternoon, triggered by work being done on a faulty valve. More than 24 hours later, firefighters were still on the scene, building the sand-and-mud dikes to prevent other massive tanks nearby from catching fire.

Firemen, police and soldiers evacuated about 2,400 families from working-class neighborhoods nearby.

No homes were damaged or seriously threatened.