All Valencia fire fatalities were trapped on highest floors of building

The 10 fatalities in the fire that destroyed a high-rise complex in the Spanish city of Valencia on Thursday all lived on the eighth and ninth floors. These are the floors above the point where the fire started, on the seventh floor, for unknown reasons at this moment. The two floors soon became a mousetrap between the fierce flames and the asphyxiating smoke that spread in the space of a few minutes through the two blocks of 14 and 10 floors in which the 138 apartments were distributed. On Saturday, the forensic police found a tenth body, the last one remaining on the list of missing persons. Even so, the government delegate to the Valencian regional government, Pilar Bernabé, ensured that the search will continue “inch by inch” of a building of which only the structure and debris remain. “I need to think that we are not going to find anyone else,” Bernabé said.

Fortunately, at the time the fire started, 5.30 p.m., many of the more than 400 residents of the complex were not in their homes. Others became aware of the flames and smoke in time and fled the building. Some others were alerted by the building’s caretaker, who warned them and helped them to go down and out to the street. One couple was rescued by firefighters from a balcony, after waiting anxiously for two hours, when firefighters had already reached the balconies of the lower floors using ladders to free some of the inhabitants. Some even used the elevator to get down to the first floor to escape the fire. However, 10 of them did not make it out — all of whom were on the upper floors.

The fire chief of the Valencia City Council, Enrique Chisbert, has defended the work of his colleagues, which has also been praised by the representatives of all the institutions. “We saw firefighters who thought that at that moment they were saying goodbye to their jobs and even their lives,” said Pilar Bernabé. The City Council of Valencia, led by María José Catalá, approved an institutional declaration expressing gratitude for the “dedication and selflessness” of the security and emergency forces, and “especially” that of the firefighters. One firefighter, who was wounded, saw how closely the fire was raging and asked his colleagues, through his walkie-talkie and with a broken voice, to say goodbye to his wife, to tell her that he loved her.

The work of the firefighters, however, is also being called into question because on the higher floors, some firefighters recommended that residents not to leave their apartments. “The homes are the safest place if the building guarantees the necessary sectorization conditions, while we can extinguish the fire,” said the fire chief. “We follow the standard protocol. For homes that are at risk, if they go into the stairwell to evacuate in a building full of smoke, what we always recommend is that [residents] stay in their homes. If there are sectorization conditions, it is the best. The contrary can result in a disorderly evacuation that can lead to multiple casualties,” he explained.

Work on the building destroyed by the fire was completed in 2008. The project complied with the 1996 fire protection standards, since the new regulations had not come into force at the time of the project. The subsequent regulations are more restrictive and require the sectorization referred to by the fire chief, which is intended to prevent a fire from spreading from one floor to another, and the existence of watertight compartments in the stairwells, which must be separated from the apartments by a door.

The firefighters’ “operating procedure for intervention in fires in high-rise buildings” referred to by Chisbert establishes that in the city of Valencia there are more than 100 buildings with more than 15 floors “subject to a possible fire intervention.” The document also specifies its date of construction and the indicative data “in order to know which fire safety regulations it was subjected to.” The charred 14-storey building in the Campanar neighborhood was not listed, meaning that the firefighters had no way of knowing the characteristics of the building before arriving. Neither could they know how fast the fire was going to spread due to the south wind blowing violently in the enclave where the building is located. “I think the behavior of the fire has been seen all over the world, you can draw your own conclusions, it spread at a very high speed,” pointed out the fire chief.

The protocol does specify the main objectives and actions in order of priority, “although they do not always follow the same sequential order of resolution”: “to ensure the safety of those concerned; the rescue of people; rescue of animals and material goods; control and extinguishing of the fire, ventilation of smoke and fire gases; shutting off the affected supplies (gas, electricity, water); inspection of homes, premises and affected areas; protection of the work area and surroundings; verification of the complete extinction of the fire by means of the use of the thermal viewer to rule out hidden sources,” appear at the top of the list. “Obviously, as is normal, our fellow firefighters were risking even more than we could during the whole operation. I don’t want to make a show of it, but the first crews experienced the danger up close,” said Chisbert. One of the firefighters remains in hospital, although his life is not in danger, while another was discharged from the hospital on Saturday.

Those who also continued to work were the forensic technicians of the Institute of Legal Medicine who, in collaboration with the National Police, are analyzing the 10 corpses for the full identification of all the deceased and their autopsies. Four of them belong to a family made up of a couple and their two children — aged three years and barely a week old. There is also the case of a retired woman who leaves behind two children. The identification phase of the victims is a complex task because, depending on the state of the bodies, a comparison with DNA tests of relatives is required to ensure that this is done properly. Once the forensic reports are complete, they will be sent to the Court of Investigation No. 10 of Valencia, where the proceedings and the investigation will be conducted in order to clarify the facts and determine whether there has been any type of negligence.

Valencia fell silent on Saturday at 12pm, with a minute’s silence held in City Hall square and another at the roundabout in front of the building, organized by the people of Valencia. They have worked tirelessly to collect clothes, food, school supplies and hygiene products, among other things. All the items that the other victims who have been left homeless and, in some cases, even without documentation, may need.

The “official” minute’s silence was attended by the premier of Valencia, Carlos Mazón; the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá; the minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant; the central government’s delegate to Valencia, Pilar Bernabé, and the leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

Julián, the caretaker of the residential complex who has collaborated with the police in the identification of missing persons and victims, was also present. He also helped in the rescue of residents: “I did everything I could, until the smoke stopped me,” he said. “It’s very hard, it’s very hard to see all that, it’s very hard,” he said regrettably. At the gathering, the falleros (the craftspeople who make the figures for the local festivity), neighbors and onlookers gave a resounding applause after the silence, but several minutes later, hardly anyone had moved, as they were overwhelmed by the black mass that the building has become and the smell of smoke that still lingers in the surrounding streets.

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