Child and two adults of same family die in Spain high-rise fire
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Municipal workers cleaning the area around the two buildings that were destroyed in a fire in Valencia.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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Madrid - A child, his father and his grandmother died early on March 4 in a fire inside a high-rise residential block in a Spanish seaside town near Benidorm, officials said.
The blaze took place 10 days after another fire in the same region killed 10 people as it ripped through a 14-storey high-rise and an adjoining 10-storey block in the port city of Valencia.
The March 4 fire broke out shortly before 2.15am on the 11th floor of a 24-storey apartment block in Villajoyosa, near the south-eastern resort of Benidorm, a police spokeswoman said.
Rescuers evacuated 120 people from the block, with 15 taken to hospital for smoke inhalation, one of whom was a local police officer, she said.
Villajoyosa mayor Marcos Zaragoza told reporters the victims were members of the same family: a young boy, his father and his grandmother.
Firefighters said the blaze was extinguished shortly before 4am, with residents allowed to return home.
The police said it was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, although media reports spoke about an overloaded plug socket.
The Valencia fire shocked Spain for the speed at which it ripped through the block, which contained 138 flats, with witnesses saying it went up in flames very quickly.
It started on one of the middle floors and within 30 minutes had consumed the entire building, fuelled by strong winds of up to 60kmh, officials said.
On March 3, the city’s Mestalla football stadium paid tribute to the victims and those affected by the fire, holding a minute’s silence before kick-off in a match between Valencia and Real Madrid.
Experts said the structure was covered with highly flammable cladding, recalling the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, in which 72 people died in a tower-block fire blamed on the cladding.
It prompted worried property owners to seek expert advice to allay fears that their own homes could be at risk.
In October 2023, 13 people died when a fire gutted a nightclub in the neighbouring region of Murcia in 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. AFP
