In January 2010, Barcelona firefighter Joan Pagès recorded a video with his mobile phone showing that the only thing to do when there is a fire in our building is to try to keep calm, confine yourself to a room, protect that of the smoke and try not to run away, because the smoke and high temperatures are very treacherous and their consequences are fatal and deadly. More recently, on November 29 of last year, another firefighter, also from Barcelona, ??recorded a very similar video.
That smoke and high temperatures are treacherous has been proven once again. This time in Rubí. In the Rosés neighborhood. Three adults, a couple and a teacher, a neighbor of another of the floors of the affected building, died on Wednesday morning in a fire at number 13 Zaragoza street. In the absence of the report of the scientific police of the Mossos d’Esquadra and that of the Fire Department of the Generalitat, everything points to the fact that the flames started in the meter room on the entrance landing of a building that was conceived as a hotel and which its owners converted into apartments.
Some flames that, according to some of the evicted neighbors consulted by this newspaper, started in this counter room where old furniture had recently been stored and became the perfect fuel for the first flames.
This possible short circuit caused flames that burned without stopping. A fire that started around half past six in the morning and that caused the first cries for help from some neighbors who saw how black and dense smoke quickly took over the corridors leading to the door of main exit
About thirty families slept in the building. Many found, upon opening the door, that the common corridor that led to the hall was impassable and chose to go back inside and try to escape through the windows that looked outside. Windows secured with fixed bars that became burglar bars.
One of the residents of the Rosés neighborhood was the first to go and ask for help. He called 112. He was not the first to alert the emergency services. Then he concentrated on helping the trapped neighbors who did nothing but scream in despair. “Three women were asking for help through the window, but they couldn’t get out because the bars prevented them from doing so. They waved their arms and hands in desperation and screamed in distress,” he explained. With hammer blows he managed to move the grate a few centimetres, which ended up starting the first patrol that arrived, made up of officers from the Rubí municipal police and the Mossos d’Esquadra.
The Generalitat Fire Brigade did not take long to appear, but by then some residents had already gained access to the roof and others had jumped into the street through the unbarred windows on the second floor.
Some firefighters from the Rubí park quoted by journalist Anna Punsí expressed their “discomfort” because two of the three trucks in the park were attending a traffic accident on the A-2 highway and the third has been broken down and without a spare for weeks .
When he arrived at the scene, the firefighting personnel extinguished the fire without difficulty. It was nothing very complicated. In fact, the flames did not gain more surface area than the hall, which was lined with wood. But the tragedy was already irremediable.
It was about a couple and a teacher who some neighbors explained taught Pare Manyanet.
Throughout the morning, police officers from the central unit of visual inspections entered the entrance hall. They are fire experts, and they put on their white frogs and spent the morning in the hall trying to identify the start of the flames.
It didn’t take long for a young woman who had lived in the building until two months ago to appear in the vicinity of the building, on the other side of the police tape. He explained that the owner was literally “a pirate who personally took care of electrical installations that jumped every two by three, because instead of calling a specialist he did it himself, which was a nyap”.
The Fire Department later confirmed that the structure of the building had no structural damage, but advised residents to wait at least one night before returning to sleep in their homes. Dense, black and dangerous smoke had taken over the place.
