Four minors died on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, October 11, in a fire in a building in Vigo, a city located in the Galicia region in northwest Spain, according to emergency services. “Four people lost their lives, all minors,” while the injured were evacuated to several local hospitals, Galician emergency services announced on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Contacted by Agence France-Presse, these services then specified that the victims, whose identity was “confirmed by the police”, were “aged between 9 and 14 years”.
Nine injured people were treated, three of whom are in “serious condition”, they said. Of these three seriously injured, one is minor. Still according to emergency services, the causes of this fire are “unknown”. This fire broke out shortly before 4 a.m. on the ground floor of a building in the As Travesas district of this coastal town in Galicia.
Second deadly fire in October
According to the local press, firefighters managed to put out the flames three hours later. A firefighter was poisoned after inhaling smoke during the intervention. Photos from local media show residents in shock in the early morning near the building, the ground floor of which was devastated by the flames which also reached certain windows on upper floors.
A team of psychologists, specialized in emergency situations, was also sent to the site to help the victims’ relatives, emergency services announced. The president of the Galicia region, Alfonso Rueda, said he was “devastated” by the fire in a message on X, and offered his “condolences” to the families of the victims.
This fire comes as the country has just been hit on October 1 by another, particularly devastating one, in which thirteen people died in the morning in a nightclub in the city of Murcia, located in the south-east of the country. This news item particularly shocked the country, as the nightclub devastated by the flames had been the subject of an administrative closure order since last year, which had not been applied.