A spectacular fire broke out late Thursday, February 22, in a fourteen-story residential building in the El Campanar district of Valencia, in the southeast of the country, causing thirteen injuries so far, including six firefighters, according to authorities.
Television images show flames devouring the building, from which thick black smoke escapes. According to emergency services, the fire broke out on the fourth floor of the building before spreading to the others.
Twenty-two teams of firefighters were sent to the site to try to put out the flames, rescuers said on X. Eight medical units were also on the scene of the disaster, where a field hospital must be set up. The strong wind blowing Thursday in Valencia made the work of firefighters more difficult, according to the authorities.
Questioned by Spanish television, the owner of a flower shop located near the building assured that this building had been built at most fourteen years ago and that the hundred apartments it housed were currently occupied.
“Dismay” and “solidarity”
Another resident explained on the same channel that the building had caught fire at an incredible speed: “It’s as if it was made of straw,” he said, specifying that the fire had started around 5:30 p.m.
“We ask residents of other areas of the city not to approach the fire to facilitate the work of the rescue teams mobilized,” wrote the mayor of Valencia, Maria José Catala, on X.
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, said he was “dismayed by the terrible fire in a building in Valencia”, on State and conveyed its “solidarity to all those affected”.
The country was recently marked by a dramatic fire which killed thirteen people in early October in a nightclub in Murcia (South-East).