5:35 p.m. begin
At around half past four in the afternoon, a report was received of a fire in an apartment on the seventh floor of a high-rise building in Valencia, in the Campanar district. Videos published on social networks show the outbreak of the fire, the causes of which are not yet known and which caused the death of 10 people.
5:50 p.m. Propagation
Within minutes, the fire not only rose to the top of the building, but also spread to the facade. A fire that should theoretically have started spreads through the building. Why?
“What burned was the facade cladding,” explains Antonio Roda, head of the Málaga Consortium fire department. This is a pair of aluminum plates shaped like a sandwich with a combustible plastic material in the middle. According to this hypothesis, when burned, the material that would make up this coating drips and breaks into pieces. This leads to the expansion of new sources at lower altitudes, adds Roda, an engineering architect who has studied the risks of this type of construction in the face of the spread of a fire.
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18.15. acceleration
In less than an hour after the warning, the fire also spread horizontally. The wind that was blowing in the city at the time of the fire was filtered through an air chamber that was left between the cover and the wall in this construction method. The air chamber is located “the entire length and width of the building,” emphasizes Roda. When the wind penetrates, the facade itself acts like a fan, violently spreading the fire in all directions.
The flames spread from this facade to the adjacent block, which is separated by a connecting tower.
6.45 p.m. destruction
Almost an hour after the warning, the entire rear facade, the north facade, is in flames. The fire turned the corner from the patio of the apartment where the fire started.
The high temperatures on the facade cause the aluminum sheets to warp and even fly outside. The fire eventually spreads to the interior of the building. The building almost completely burns down. Hardly giving time to react.
The building, on Friday morning. Monica Torres
The materials
All experts agree that the construction materials of the exterior facade were responsible for the rapid spread of the flames, which was accelerated by the gusts of wind. While a combustible plastic was initially cited as the cause of the uncontrolled flame spread, a thermoplastic material, such as a resin for bonding aluminum, is now cited as a flame accelerator.
Credits
Opening image: Google Earth
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