Valencia fire: family among ten dead in cladding blaze
At least ten people are dead after a fire engulfed two adjoining residential apartment blocks in the Spanish city of Valencia and spread rapidly because of highly flammable cladding.
Four of the dead were members of the same family: a father, mother, a three-year-old girl and a newborn, Spanish media reported.
Others, including a seven-year-old girl and six firefighters were injured in the blaze, which forced residents to cling from balconies in the hope of rescue. Ukrainian refugees were among those living in the building.
“Valencia is going through a very sad moment,” María José Catalá, the city’s mayor, said on Friday morning. She said that the risk of one of the damaged buildings collapsing and the continuing heat from the fire were preventing emergency workers from getting in to search for possible survivors.
Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, visited the scene of the disaster on Friday and urged Spaniards to “show empathy, affection and solidarity with the victims, with their families, with those who still do not know exactly what has happened”.
Officials said they expected the death toll to rise.
The buildings, which were home to about 450 people, were covered in highly flammable cladding
The disaster has already prompted calls for an investigation into the cladding used on the two buildings.
Fuastino Yanguas, a member of Valencia’s fire brigade, said the material used on the facade of the building must be examined because it “was a factor that contributed a lot” to the lightning spread of the flames, as were the strong winds, with gusts of up to 60 km/h at the time the blaze broke out.
Esther Puchades, deputy head of Valencia’s Industrial Engineers Association, said the fire had spread rapidly because the building was covered with highly flammable polyurethane cladding and lacked firewalls.
A 2007 promotional video by the building’s developer highlighted the “innovative material” used to clad the building’s exterior, which passed “rigorous quality checks”.
Sixteen firefighting units and five ambulances were sent to the scene
The spread of the fatal fire in Grenfell Tower in London in 2017 after an electrical fault was blamed on the use of highly flammable external cladding. The blaze killed 72 people.
The city has announced three days of mourning, suspended the start of a month-long annual festival, and its local football teams, Valencia and Levante, announced their weekend games had been postponed.
The blaze engulfed the multi-storey buildings, one with 14 floors and the other with ten, which were home to about 450 people, on Thursday evening and spread quickly.
The fire started at about 5.30pm on the fourth floor, with vast clouds of black smoke engulfing the buildings in the Campanar neighbourhood, according to residents.
The 14-storey building was rapidly “reduced to a skeleton”
Sergio Perez, 49, a driver who lives nearby, said the building burned as if someone had “poured gasoline” on it. “It’s a catastrophe. Unimaginable. It’s devastating,” he said.
Slava Honcharenko, 31, from Ukraine, said he knew several families of compatriots who lived in the building. “We feel very bad. We know what it is when you lose your house because we experienced this two years ago in Ukraine,” he told the AFP news agency.
Soldiers from Spain’s military emergency unit were also deployed and medics set up a large tent to tend to the injured at the scene.