Four dead as Valencia apartment block gutted by flames fanned by high winds, official says
Spanish firefighters have been battling high winds to put out a huge fire that gutted a multi-storey apartment block in Valencia and left four dead.
At least 13 people have been injured, including a minor and six firefighters, emergency services and regional officials in the eastern port city said, without providing details on the extent of the injuries. The emergency services earlier said seven people were lightly injured, mostly from smoke inhalation.
“It can be confirmed that four people have died,” Jorge Suarez Torres, deputy director of emergency services for the Valencia region, told reporters.
Images showed flames and vast clouds of black smoke engulfing the building in the Campanar neighbourhood in western Valencia, with 22 teams of firefighters called in to fight the fire, which also spread to a neighbouring building.
Spain’s TVE public television said there were more than 130 flats in the 14storey building, which had been rapidly “reduced to a skeleton”.
The fire began at about 5.30pm on the fourth floor and rapidly spread, witnesses and the emergency services said, with images showing flames and vast clouds of black smoke engulfing the building.
Spain’s TVE public television said there were more than 130 flats in the 14-storey building that was rapidly “reduced to a skeleton”.
Speaking to regional TV station A Punt, Esther Puchades, deputy head of Valencia’s industrial engineers association, said the fire had spread so rapidly because the building was covered with highly flammable polyurethane cladding.
In June 2017, a fire ripped through Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey high-rise in west London, killing 72 people, with the blaze spreading rapidly due to the highly combustible cladding on the block’s outside walls. A public inquiry into the disaster is still ongoing.
Luis Ibáñez, who lives in a nearby building, told TVE he had looked out of the window and saw the flames engulfing the block “within a matter of minutes”, saying it was “as if it was made of cork”.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “The whole side of the building directly opposite was on fire, from the first floor to the sixth and seventh floor.
“There was a really strong wind and the fire was spreading to the left at a huge speed.”
One resident called Vicente said he got back to find the building in flames, telling TVE he thought everyone had been safely evacuated. “I think they all got out,” he said.
Footage on social media that was reposted by Spanish media outlets showed a father and daughter being rescued from a balcony where they had been trapped.
“Please stay away from the area of the fire to let the emergency services do their work,” Valencia’s mayor, María José Catalá, urged local people on X.
A woman who runs a nearby flower shop told public television the building was no more than 14 years old and had more than 100 flats, all of which were occupied.
“What caused the fire to spread was mostly the wind,” she said, describing scenes of “chaos” as the blaze took hold, snarling traffic and sending clouds of smoke everywhere.
Writing on X, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he was “shocked by the terrible fire” and was in contact with the mayor and the region’s leader “to offer whatever help needed”, and extended his condolences to everyone affected by the blaze.
In October last year, a fire gutted a nightclub in the neighbouring region of Murcia, claiming 13 lives in what was Spain’s deadliest nightclub fire in three decades.
Six people have been charged as part of a manslaughter investigation and could face up to nine years behind bars if the deaths were found to be the result of negligence.