A fire of enormous proportions has consumed and reduced a 14-storey building in the Campanar district of Valencia to a burning skeleton.
There would be several charred bodies among the remains of Tower 1 which would have been located by drones, according to unconfirmed sources quoted by the local newspaper Levante.
Due to the high temperature and the risk of collapse of the structure, the fire brigade teams do not yet have access to the building, while the fight against the flames continues from outside.
The flames, which broke out at 5.30pm on the fifth floor for reasons still under investigation,
due to the strong westerly wind and the high temperatures of 25 degrees,
quickly spread along the vertical of the building and also extended to the tower 2, in the same block as the residential complex, where a total of around 350 people live in 140 apartments.
According to a provisional toll,
at least 14 people were injured,
due to fractures, burns and smoke intoxication, including several firefighters and a child, hospitalized in various hospitals in the city.
Numerous people, including a father with his daughter and a couple, who had been trapped for a long time on the balconies of the upper floors of tower 1, were brought to safety by the firefighters, who rushed to the scene with over ten teams, while a hospital was being set up camp and send mobile burn and resuscitation units.
The skyscraper on fire in Valencia
The firefighters have not yet been able to verify whether there are still people trapped inside the building.
The 112 emergency services avail themselves of the collaboration of the Ume, the military unit of the army, to try to bring the flames under control.
Shortly before 10pm the fire had not yet been put out nor any fatalities confirmed.
The testimonies of the residents 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, screaming desperately looking for their relatives and who were told by the firefighters to put wet clothes under them. the doors to try to block the flames and smoke", said Vicente, interviewed by national TV RTVE.
The 14-storey building on fire in Valencia
"We are surprised by the speed with which the flames spread, an hour later the fire also reached tower 2, there are still many people inside", Adriana, the complex's administrator, told local media Levante in shock. .
According to an initial reconstruction by the firefighters, the insulating material on the buildings built 15 years ago would have favored the rapid development of the fire, even without the fire prevention systems having been activated.
The vice-president of the Order of Industrial Technical Engineers of Valencia, Esther Pchades, who carried out an assessment of the skyscraper, attributed the voracity of the flames to the coating of a layer of polyurethane under the aluminum plates
that covered the facade, a "totally flammable" product , which caused the flames to spread in less than half an hour," he told 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-storey building in Valencia with a ventilated façade and polyurethane cladding will establish "a before and after" in Spain, where until now no such episode had occurred, while similar events are remembered which have place in London or China in recent 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 devoured by flames in a few hours, attributed the voracity of the fire to the covering of the insulating material, placed between the two layers of aluminum in the facade panels, "highly flammable, and this is why the flames spread to the entire building in half an hour", according to what he indicated in statements to Valencian TV A' Punt..
According to the expert, "polyurethane is used in Spain, but not in this way".
After the fire in the Grenfell skyscraper in London in 2017, which caused dozens of victims, some countries, including Great Britain, banned the material in facade construction, but not Spain where, especially during the real estate boom of decade 2000-2009, the date in which the construction of the two towers of Valencia dates back, would have been widely used.
And it still is, although isolated 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 so far no fire of such large proportions had occurred, the legislation could be revised to ban the use of polyurethane in building coverings, together with the action of manufacturers who " they are reviewing the composition of the material."
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