Local officials in Valencia, eastern Spain, said on Friday that a fire that destroyed an apartment complex had killed at least four people and left up to fifteen more missing.
On television, the building’s exterior was blazing, with bits of flaming material spilling over onto the sidewalk and tiny explosions audible from within. Witnesses reported that the fire spread over the entire building in thirty minutes, driven by high winds.
People were seen phoning for assistance from their balconies. From the first floor to a mattress below, a fireman had to jump.
After applauding the firefighters and offering his sympathy to those impacted, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was en route to the scene.
Emergency services reported that the fire started on Thursday night on the fourth floor of the building in a posh neighborhood of the third-largest city in Spain and spread to other apartments.
Maria Jose Catala, the mayor of Valencia, informed reporters on Friday that nine to fifteen people were still missing and that four deaths had been confirmed.
Jorge Suarez, deputy head of emergency services in the Valencia region, said there looked little risk of the tower collapsing for now, but firemen were operating from outside.
Tackling the fire inside was not immediately practicable, and the firefighters were first trying to cool the facade, he said.
According to local media, the structure contained hundreds of flats spread across 14 stories.
It was difficult to determine the exact number of missing persons because the building was “a building with many flats, flats in which there were people of foreign nationality, whose location is more difficult to pinpoint,” according to Pilar Bernabe, government spokesperson for the Valencia region.
According to Esther Punchades, a spokesman for the insurance inspection agency APCAS, the use of polyurethane plastic on the exterior and the absence of firewalls would have facilitated the fire’s quick spread on public broadcaster TVE.
the fatal fire that spread throughout the Grenfell Tower block in London in 2017 due to an electrical malfunction that was attributed to the exterior cladding, which is highly flammable.
The city has halted the beginning of an annual celebration that lasts for a month and declared three days of sorrow.
