Prosecutors join probe of fast-moving building fire
MILAN — Italian firefighters on Monday tackled remaining hot spots and continued to search a 20-story apartment building in Milan that was destroyed by fire, but said there was no indication that anyone was missing inside.
The blaze recalled the deadly fire that swept through Grenfell Tower in London in 2017. In that case, the cladding on the outside of that building was blamed for the speed at which the fire engulfed the block, and officials noted similar issues in the Milan fire.
Prosecutors were investigating for any indication of wrongdoing.
“I have never seen a situation like this,” said firefighter official Giuliano Santagata. “Just look at the facade and you see that everything is completely burned, and therefore presume that it was made of flammable material.”
The fire was reported by a resident on the 15th floor who sounded the alarm as he descended the building and told other occupants to evacuate. The blaze quickly spread through the cladding on the facade, which residents said was supposed to have been fire resistant, Corriere della Sera reported.
“The cause of the fires still needs to be determined, but it seems that the rapid spread of the flames was due to the thermal covering of the building,” said Carlo Sibia, an Interior Ministry official in Rome.
Some cases of smoke inhalation were reported from Sunday’s blaze, but no serious injuries or deaths. Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who visited the scene, said he saw firefighters’ hands burned from battling the blaze.
In the Grenfell Tower fire, flammable cladding and lax fire safety standards were blamed for the June 2017 blaze that killed 72 people — the greatest loss of life in a fire on British soil since World War II. Britain’s government has pledged to strip similar combustible cladding from dozens of other publicly owned tower blocks.