A six-year-old boy died in the early hours of Sunday to Monday in Granada, as a result of the fire that occurred in the house where he slept with his mother, who has been seriously injured. According to a spokesman for the local police, after 3.15 they received a warning for several deflagrations – sudden fire without explosion – that, quickly, were noticed through the terrace of the house, on the third floor of a block of flats. According to this same source, it is a block of flats in which lives, above all, elderly people who had to be taken to the street given the enormous virulence of the flames. The flames forced the eviction of 40 neighbors, who have already returned to their homes. The burned apartment is located in a block of five floors and wall to another very similar construction. Early indications point to a gas explosion as a possible cause of the flames, according to firefighters.
Detail of the terrace of the house where the fire occurred, on Circunvalación street in Granada. Miguel Angel Molina (EFE)
The events occurred on the third floor of a residential block on Circunvalación Encina Street, in the neighborhood of La Chana. The first warning has been given by the neighbors, who have reported "flames and several deflagrations", according to the 112 Emergency service. Agents of the Local and National Police have managed to rescue the mother and evacuate about 40 neighbors. In a video released by the Local Police through Twitter, a very intense and violent fire is perceived in the room that overlooks the balcony of that house. In fact, after a few minutes, you can see how fireballs fall from that balcony to the house just below.
Tonight, at 3:20 a.m. we have been alerted by an explosion and subsequent fire in a flat in c / Circunvalación Encina.
Despite the rapid intervention of emergency teams, a child born in 2016 has died and his mother has been seriously injured. pic.twitter.com/eZvnwoZxNB
— LOCAL POLICE GRANADA (@PoliciaGr) May 15, 2023
Gustavo Molino, spokesman for Firefighters, explained to this newspaper that the explosion occurred when mother and son got up to go to the bathroom. When the light was turned on, the gas that had apparently been coming out of at least one of the stove burners for hours exploded. The shock wave of the explosion hit mother and son in their path, throwing them a few meters. The boy died at the scene and the mother suffered severe burns.
The spokesman added in statements to Efe that, upon arrival at the damaged house, they found the deceased child and his mother with "important" burns, so the first action was the rescue of both, who were the only people who were at that time in the house. "We could not minimize anything, we just finished extinguishing the fire, rescuing these people and evacuating the smoke," the spokesman explained. The firefighters have taken very little time to control the fire because, explains his spokesman, in these cases "the combustion is especially violent and fast, because it consumes the fuel (gas) very quickly. We arrived seven minutes after the warning and most of the fire was consumed and there was mostly heat and a lot of smoke," he said. A while later, around 4.15 in the morning, they have put out the fire. About a quarter of an hour later, a judicial commission has gone to the place to certify the removal of the body of the deceased child.
The mother has been transferred to the Traumatology Hospital of Granada with burns all over her body. His prognosis is serious. An elderly person has also been taken to a hospital as a preventive measure and an officer has been treated for burns on one hand.
The fire has caused damage to the house and in adjacent areas, such as glass breaks in windows of the corridor and nearby floors due to the deflagration. The mayor of the city, Francisco Cuenca, has assured that there has been no structural damage to the building. The mother, explained the councilor, was being attended by the social services of the City Council that helped her "on a regular basis". According to the mayor, the woman was not immersed in an eviction process, but there was "an administrative issue," he said, for "the non-payment of some months of rent." Cuenca has described the situation that the woman was going through as "delicate from the social point of view".