A massive fire destroyed a multi-story apartment tower in Valencia, Spain’s eastern port city, killing at least four people and injuring 14.
The death toll may grow, with 19 people missing, according to a city council source who declined to be identified.
The fire broke out on the fourth floor around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday and spread quickly, according to witnesses and emergency services, with photographs showing flames and massive clouds of black smoke consuming the building in the Campanar neighbourhood of western Valencia.
“It can be confirmed that four people have died,” Jorge Suarez Torres, Valencia’s deputy director of emergency services, told reporters.
According to emergency services, fourteen persons were treated for varied degrees of injury, including a seven-year-old child, and 12 of them were taken to hospitals.
According to Spain’s TVE public television, there were over 130 flats in the 14-story building, which was quickly “reduced to a skeleton” with 22 teams of firefighters fighting the fire.
Esther Puchades, deputy head of Valencia’s Industrial Engineers Association (COGITI), told regional television station A Punt that the fire spread quickly because the building was wrapped in extremely combustible polyurethane veneer.Luis Ibanez, who lives nearby, told TVE that he peered out of a window and saw flames engulfing the block “within a matter of minutes,” describing it as “as if it were made of cork.”
“I could not believe what I was witnessing. “The entire side of the building directly opposite was on fire, from the first to the sixth and seventh floors,” he explained.
There was a strong breeze, and the fire was rapidly moving to the left.
Images of chaos
Vicente, a resident, returned home to find the building on fire, telling TVE that he believed everyone had been safely evacuated.
“I think they all got out,” he said.
Spanish media sites republished social media footage showing a father and daughter being rescued from a balcony where they were stranded.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X that he was “shocked by the terrible fire” and that he was in contact with the mayor and the region’s leader “to offer whatever help was needed” while also sending his condolences to everyone affected by the incident.
In October, a fire destroyed a nightclub in the neighboring area of Murcia, killing 13 people in Spain’s deadliest nightclub disaster in 30 years.
Six people have been accused in connection with a manslaughter investigation and could face up to nine years in prison if the deaths were determined to be caused by negligence.
The fears that polyurethane cladding may exacerbate the Valencia fire mirrored the 2017 disaster at London’s Grenfell Tower.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X that he was “shocked by the terrible fire” and that he was in contact with the mayor and the region’s leader “to offer whatever help was needed” while also sending his condolences to everyone affected by the incident.
In October, a fire destroyed a nightclub in the neighboring area of Murcia, killing 13 people in Spain’s deadliest nightclub disaster in 30 years.
Six people have been accused in connection with a manslaughter investigation and could face up to nine years in prison if the deaths were determined to be caused by negligence.
The fears that polyurethane cladding may exacerbate the Valencia fire mirrored the 2017 disaster at London’s Grenfell Tower.
In that incident, 72 people were murdered in a fire at a 24-story high-rise in west London, which spread quickly due to the highly combustible cladding on the block’s exterior walls. The public inquiry into the disaster is still ongoing.