A hypothesis was starting to gain strength yesterday: the fire that has razed two towers of a building in the city of Valencia and that has killed ten could have started in the mechanism of the electric motor of the awning of door 86, on the eighth floor . It is only a hypothesis, but yesterday it was the one pointed out by sources close to the scientific police team that is investigating the case and, moreover, the one that responded to a certain logic. It is not yet a certainty, as the investigation, under judicial instruction, continues its course. But it is the most likely.
When there was the first spark, there was no one in the apartment where the fire occurred, which also caused hundreds of victims, since the tenant was outside. It also took place on the terrace; evidence that can be seen with the many videos that were recorded during the first moments. The fire did not, therefore, originate inside the house, it was outside. And the first thing that was seen burning (from the recorded images) was precisely the awning. There was therefore no human error in generating the fire: it was an electrical failure, possibly the awning motor. The police found the tenant of that house, who was on a trip, and assured that he had not left any electrical device running, as the newspaper Levante EMV reported yesterday.
This is the hypothesis. Sources from the administration of this estate told La Vanguardia that many residents had installed electric awnings. “But we had never heard that they gave any problems”, they added. A technician specialized in analyzing the causes of fires from the Valencia Fire Brigade consulted indicated that, according to the images, it was almost certain that everything was an “electrical failure” outside, on the terrace. This specialist added that in a case like this one cannot say how long it will take to know the specific cause, which will depend on many factors, including the testimony of the owner or tenant of the home.
There is the hypothesis, and then there are the certainties. One of which is that the material with which the cladding of the facade was made played in favor of the fire, in an accelerated way, as has already been explained in this newspaper, and the strong west wind would have col· labored This same technician acknowledged that “this has not been normal, this facade was built with a flammable material, many colleagues told me that they were surprised by the way everything accelerated”. A home in this same building suffered a fire in 2012. It was a fire that started inside door 51 and the origin was a smartphone battery. The fire was confined to the interior of the apartment and was quickly extinguished.
The representative of the Spanish Government, Pilar Bernabé, confirmed that the scientific police had already registered “pam a pam” the two towers to collect all the samples that will be analyzed to conclude both the origin of the fire and the speed with which it spread through the facade. Another important piece of information was brought forward yesterday by the newspaper Las Provincias The damaged building, with 143 homes, received the approval of the fire prevention department of the Fire Department of Valencia in 2005, the date on which the keys were handed over to the buyers . It was the same year in which, in July, the final license was granted to the property, which had all the papers in order. This information has been provided by the Valencia City Council to the court investigating the case. The building, which was designed by the FBEX developer, owned by Juan Henares Parada, began to be promoted in 2000.
The representative of the Spanish Government also pointed out yesterday that all the samples of the recovered corpses have already been taken and that they are trying to identify the bodies, something that is expected to be done in the next few days thanks to the ·collaboration in the identification of the central police station of the scientific police of Madrid. Bernabé did not want to talk about hypothesis or causes and limited himself to remembering that there is secrecy of the summary. In fact, the head of the court of inquiry number 9 of Valencia yesterday assumed the competence to investigate the causes and circumstances of the fire recorded in two buildings in the neighborhood of Campanar, and ratified the secrecy of the proceedings.
In the meantime, those affected try to recover, as far as possible, a certain normalcy. The first families have already begun to settle in some of the 131 homes that the Valencia City Council has made available for a period of three months “totally extendable”, the mayoress of Valencia, María José Catalá. With this first term, he explained, “it will be enough to see the social vulnerability of families”. That being the case, the council emphasized that “no one here will be left without a home overnight”, but that this term, “totally extendable”, will work so that municipal technicians can study each case in a different way individualized
“The idea is that families can resume, as far as possible, their lives and can leave the hotel that served as their first welcome, to recover a space where they can resume their routines, a comfortable, livable place where they families dismayed by what happened can feel at ease”, said Catalá. Yesterday, a minute of silence with representatives of all political forces once again remembered the victims of the tragedy in the Plaza de l’Ajuntament of Valencia. Minutes earlier, the local government board approved the withdrawal from the municipal collection system of the IBI receipts corresponding to the 2024 financial year of the properties affected by the fire, in order to study their situation.
Last night the plenary of the Council of the Generalitat Valenciana approved a package of financial aid intended for those affected. These are economic and social resources that will be activated immediately.
