Blame It On the Goose
At least 19 people are dead and 24 others hospitalized. Some of them have been blinded, while others have been induced into comas in the hope that doctors can save them.
All had drunk cheap vodka and rum laced with methanol, a toxic substance used to stretch alcohol on the black market and guarantee high profits for manufacturers.
The Czech Republic announced emergency measures Wednesday as the death toll from the methanol poisoning mounted, including two women aged 28 and 21. Kiosks and markets were banned from selling spirits with more than 30 percent alcohol content and police raided outlets nationwide. At 410 sites, they found 70 cases of illegal alcohol.
Prime Minister Petr Necas called on all Czechs to refrain from drinking “any alcohol whose origin is uncertain” but authorities still feared the death toll will rise further.
Little is officially known about the culprits other than that they work in the country’s depressed northeast, a former heartland of industry under communism. The Moravian-Silesian region near the border with Poland has unemployment about 50 percent higher than the national average of 8.3 percent.
Of the 16 confirmed dead in the Czech Republic, eight lived in the region; two others died in neighboring Poland and one more in Slovakia.
Senior police official Vaclav Kucera said all the poisoning cases so far are likely connected and two suspects have been arrested — one in the eastern city of Zlin and another in the northeastern city of Havirov. The first two fatalities were announced Sept. 6 in Havirov.
Methanol is mainly used for industrial purposes but unscrupulous criminal networks sometimes misuse it to illegally produce cheap liquor because it’s cheap and impossible to distinguish from real drinking alcohol.
