Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Approximately 60 people were evacuated from the Galerias Vallarta shopping center on Tuesday night after a fire broke out in a hallway within the mall. At 10:30 pm, the city's Civil Protection and Fire Departments responded to the call reporting a fire in the casino area of the mall.

"When we arrived, we found one of the carts used to transport garbage ablaze in a common area of the hallway next to the casino," Civil Protection and Fire Services Director Sergio Ramírez López said. "Mall security had used a chemical in an attempt to put out the flames, but it had only made the fire larger and caused more smoke. After bomberos got the fire under control, we decided to evacuate the casino, as well as the cinema below to avoid further incident, because we do not know what caused the fire. It could have been a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, but we have not ruled out bad intention. We are going to wait and see how the investigation develops before making an official determination," the civil authority said.

According to Ramírez López, this is the second time that the administrative staff of Galerías Vallarta has been cited for putting the safety of its customers at risk. The first incident occurred due to a failure to follow proper safety procedures during the maintenance and cleaning of the mall's gas tanks, and failure to notify Civil Protection. Both occurrences resulted in a financial penalty.

"In this case, we had no idea what had happened despite the involvement of mall security. The plaza's administration will be penalized, because the incident took place in a common area and they did not generate appropriate reports for the authorities. It is important to have a report on record to help us avoid such situations in the future," he stated.

After the fire was extinguished, we made an inspection of all areas of the shopping mall to assess whether the fire extinguishers and smoke detectors were working," he concluded.