An enormous fire has destroyed a 14-story building in the Campanar district of Valencia, turning it into a burning skeleton. According to unconfirmed sources cited by local newspaper Levante, among the remains of Tower 1 were several charred bodies that would have been located by drones. Due to the high temperatures and the risk of collapse of the structure, the fire brigade does not yet have access to the building while the fight against the flames from outside continues.
The flames, which broke out from the fifth floor at 5:30 p.m. for reasons that are still unclear, due to strong westerly winds and high temperatures of 25 degrees They quickly spread along the vertical of the building and also extended to Tower 2, in the same block of the residential complex, where a total of around 350 people live in 140 apartments. According to the preliminary budget at least 14 people were injured, Several firefighters and a child were hospitalized in various hospitals in the city for fractures, burns and smoke inhalation. Numerous people, including a father with his daughter and a couple, who were trapped for a long time on the balconies of the upper floors of Tower 1, were brought to safety by the fire department, which rushed to the scene with over ten teams. While a hospital was being set up, they set up camp and sent in mobile burn and resuscitation units.
The skyscraper in Valencia is burning
The fire department has not yet been able to check whether there are still people in the building. The 112 emergency services are using the cooperation of the Ume, the army's military unit, to try to bring the flames under control. Shortly before 10 p.m. the fire had not yet been extinguished and there were no fatalities. The residents' statements are dramatic. “We saw the windows explode from the fire and the temperature became unbearable and we fled outside. But there were still many people inside, desperately searching for their relatives and told by firefighters to put wet clothes under the doors to try to block the flames and smoke,” Vicente said in an interview with the national television channel RTVE.
The 14-story building in Valencia burns
“We are surprised at the speed with which the flames are spreading. An hour later the fire also reached Tower 2, there are still many people inside,” a shocked Adriana, the manager of the complex, told local media Levante. According to an initial reconstruction by the fire department, the insulation materials of the buildings built 15 years ago would have facilitated the rapid development of the fire, even without the fire protection systems being activated. Vice-president of the Order of Industrial Technical Engineers of Valencia, Esther Pchades, who conducted an assessment of the skyscraper, attributed the violence of the flames to the coating of a polyurethane layer beneath the aluminum panels that covered the facade, a “totally flammable product that caused the flames to spread in less than half an hour,” he explained on Valencian public television. The two blocks of the complex, built in 2009, were not supposed to contain polyurethane, which was banned after a dramatic fire in a building in London in 2005.
The fire in the fourteen-story building in Valencia with a ventilated facade and polyurethane cladding will create a “before and after” in Spain, where there has never been such an incident, while similar events that took place in London or China will be remembered the last few years. The vice-president of the Order of Industrial Engineers and Technicians of Valencia (Cogitival), Esther Puchades, who carried out an assessment of the building, which was engulfed by flames within a few hours, attributed the violence of the fire to the covering of insulating material that was placed between the two Aluminum layers of the facade panels are “highly flammable and that is why the flames spread to the entire building within half an hour”, as he stated in statements to the Valencian TV A' Punt.
According to the expert, “polyurethane is used in Spain, but not in this way”. After the Grenfell skyscraper fire in London in 2017, which claimed dozens of lives, some countries, including Great Britain, banned the material in facade construction, but not Spain, where, particularly during the property boom of the 2000-2009 decade, the date that the construction of the two towers of Valencia dates back would have been widespread. And it's still that way, even though it's insulated with fire barriers to prevent the spread of fire in the event of a fire.
According to Puchades, after today's fire in Spain, where there had never been a fire of such magnitude, the legislation could be revised to ban the use of polyurethane in building cladding, along with the measure of manufacturers “verifying the composition”. of the material.”
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA