Hueypoxtla | |
Settlement Type: | town |
Seal Size: | 90px |
Mapsize: | 200px |
Pushpin Map: | Mexico State of Mexico#Mexico |
Pushpin Mapsize: | 200 |
Subdivision Type: | Country |
Subdivision Name: | Mexico |
Subdivision Type1: | State |
Subdivision Name1: | State of Mexico |
Area Total Km2: | 80.34 |
Population As Of: | 2010 |
Population Total: | 3,989 |
Timezone: | Central Standard Time |
Utc Offset: | -6 |
Website: | https://www.hueypoxtla.gob.mx/ |
Hueypoxtla or Villa de San Bartolomé Hueypoxtla is a town in the State of Mexico, in Mexico. It serves as the municipal seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name. In 2010, the town had a total population of 3,989.[1] The name comes from the Nahuatl language and means "place of great merchants" (see pochteca).[2]
On December 4, 2013, a cobalt-60 radioactive source stolen from a truck two days earlier in Tizayuca, Hidalgo, was recovered there, as well as the heavy truck itself; the decommissioned cobalt therapy machine had been en route from Tijuana, Baja California, to proper disposal at a radioactive waste storage centre in the nearby municipality of Temascalapa.[3] [4] Federal police and military units established an armed cordon approximately around the exposed radiation source in the empty lot where it had been removed from its protectiveshielding and abandoned.[5] Classes were suspended for two days at a neighbourhood kindergarten named for Marie Curie.[6] Six people showing signs of possible radiation exposure from the orphan source were later detained.[7] The source's level of radioactivity was reported as 3000 curies (111 terabequerels).It is not known whether the thieves wanted the truck (which included a crane), the cobalt-60, or both.[8]