“There were people screaming, desperate people who couldn’t find their children and even an old person who fainted in front of me because he said he couldn’t find his daughters and granddaughters.” “I tried to go out by the stairs and the smoke was thrown over me, I went down by the elevator.” “All the neighbors were on the ground, crying, everything has burned.” These are some of the testimonies of the building of 143 homes in Valencia (with more than 350 residents) that had to be hastily evacuated yesterday after a brutal fire that, at the close of this edition, was still active, despite the titanic struggle of the firefighters to try to suffocate him.
According to the latest official medical statement provided by the deputy general director of Emergencies of the Generalitat Valenciana, Jorge Suárez, there were 13 injured of various degrees – six of them, firefighters – who were transferred to different hospital centers in the city. In addition, hotel places were made available to accommodate residents who have lost their homes. “All the floors are burnt,” Vicente, one of the affected neighbors who saw the flames consuming what little was left of his house, told La Vanguardia.
Municipal sources explained that the people who requested accommodation had already been resettled in city hotels and transferred on buses from the EMT, the public transport company.
The fire started, for reasons that are still unknown, on the fifth floor of an 18-story building in the Valencian neighborhood of Campanar. The flames quickly spread through all the homes and affected an adjacent 8-story building. According to Fire Department sources, a flammable material, polyurethane, present on the facade of the building, built 15 years ago, would have been the cause of the fire spreading so quickly. The strong gusts of west wind that blew yesterday in Valencia also made it difficult to extinguish the flames which, despite the tenacity of the firefighters, remained active last night.
Ariadna, the administrator of the property where the fire started, unable to hold back tears, explained to journalists that the fire spread “super fast”.
Despite the harshness of the images of a fire that engulfed the two buildings and left them reduced to a simple skeleton, during the evening there was a small moment for hope. The firefighters managed to rescue a couple of young people surrounded by flames from a balcony. This man and this woman, who were caught inside the house when the fire started – it was 5:30 p.m. – stayed for two hours on the balcony of their house while some firefighters, a few meters away they in a crane, were putting out the flames burning around them with a hose.
Finally, with one of the cranes, they managed to rescue them amid the joyous applause of the neighbors and curious onlookers who witnessed the outcome in amazement.
Faced with the magnitude of the fire, troops from the Military Emergency Unit moved from the Bétera base, and 112 reported on social networks that the installation of a field hospital is planned.
“Let whoever is a doctor raise his hand!” Up to thirty volunteer doctors came to work in the makeshift hospital. Many of the doctors arrived on their own and others because of the call made to the health centers. In fact, the Ministry of Health reported that the critical and burn units of the hospitals in Valencia were coordinating for a possible action after the fire. Most of the injured affected by smoke inhalation and burns of varying degrees were taken to these units.
Given the bewilderment of the first few hours, the local police enabled the number 690-167-830 to attend to the relatives of the people affected by the fire.
The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, and the mayoress of Valencia, María José Catalá, went to the scene of the events, who asked citizens on social networks not to approach the fire to facilitate the tasks equipment and avoid unnecessary risks.
