Qualla: 2013 Rosario Gas Explosion

2013 Rosario Gas Explosion: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yilku1, CC BY 4.0. The neighbors smelled it first. For hours that morning, the sharp scent of gas hung over the corner of Salta and Oroño Streets in central Rosario, and people called to report it. Then, at 9:30 on a Tuesday, August 6, 2013, the leak found a spark. The blast tore through a building, and a nine-story apartment block next door folded in on itself, collapsing into rubble with families still inside. Twenty-two people died. Sixty more were injured. The address, Salta 2141, became a word every Rosarino learned to say softly.

Image: Yilku1 | CC BY 4.0

2013 Rosario Gas Explosion: An Ordinary Tuesday

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yilku1, CC BY 4.0. There was nothing remarkable about the morning. Children were at school or being readied for it. Workers had left for their jobs; others were still home. The collapsed apartment block was an ordinary place where ordinary lives were underway: people making coffee, getting dressed,...

Image: Yilku1 | CC BY 4.0

2013 Rosario Gas Explosion: The Calls That Went Unanswered

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Presidencia de la Nación, CC BY-SA 2.0. What made the loss harder to bear was the sense that it could have been stopped. Residents told reporters they had smelled gas hours before the explosion and had phoned Litoral Gas, the city's gas provider. The company insisted it had received no such calls, suggesting people may...

Image: Presidencia de la Nación | CC BY-SA 2.0

2013 Rosario Gas Explosion: A City That Closed Ranks

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yilku1, CC BY 4.0. Rosario's grief turned, almost at once, into action. The national government declared two days of mourning, and political campaigns then underway for an imminent election were suspended out of respect. Pope Francis, himself an Argentine, sent a letter of condolence to the city's ...

Image: Yilku1 | CC BY 4.0

2013 Rosario Gas Explosion: Twenty-Two Names

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yilku1, CC BY 4.0. Salta Street was closed. Engineers condemned the two buildings still standing at the site, and out of respect, the demolition was carried out without explosives. For years the corner stood as a wound in the city's fabric. Then Rosario chose to make it a place of memory rather tha...

Image: Yilku1 | CC BY 4.0