10 dead after fire destroys residential high-rise in Valencia

Spain’s TVE public television said there were more than 130 flats in the 14-storey building, which was rapidly ‘reduced to a skeleton’, with 22 teams of firefighters battling the blaze.

Spanish media have reported that the fire spread rapidly because the building was covered with highly-inflammable 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 on-going.

One witness who lives in a nearby building in Valencia, told TVE that 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. The whole side of the building directly opposite was on fire, from the first floor to the sixth and seventh floor,’ he said. ‘There was a really strong wind and the fire was spreading to the left at a huge speed.’

Footage on social media which was reposted by Spanish media outlets showed a father and daughter being rescued from a balcony where they had been trapped.

Writing on X (formerly Twitter), Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was ‘shocked by the terrible fire’ and was in contact with the mayor of Valencia and the region’s leader ‘to offer whatever help needed’ and extending 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 probe and could face up to nine years behind bars if the deaths were found to be the result of negligence.

We will be updating this report.

(22:07 h) Actualización asistencia sanitaria en el incendio edificio Campanar (Valencia), según informa #CICU @GVAsanitat:

➡️14 personas afectadas: 9 son hombres, de entre 25 y 57 años; 4 son mujeres de entre 27 y 81 años; y un menor de 7 años.

➡️ A excepción de dos mujeres… pic.twitter.com/isBWwpNsjf

— Emergències 112CV (@GVA112) February 22, 2024