Three people have died – a small child, his father and his grandmother – and another 15 have been injured this Monday in the fire on the eleventh floor of a building in the Alicante town of Villajoyosa (36,093 inhabitants). According to sources from the Emergency Information and Coordination Center, the alert call was received at 2:15 in the morning from a large block of flats at number 1 on Marineros Avenue in the municipality. The victims lived on the eleventh floor and are from the same family: grandmother, son and grandson, as confirmed by City Hall sources. The investigation of the incident is carried out by the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard.
The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has stated that the overload in the living room socket was the cause of the fire. Mazón has traveled to Villajoyosa, where he has visited the damaged building. According to the head of the Valencian Executive, the investigation by the judicial police has not yet determined which appliances or devices were being charged in the aforementioned socket. According to the regional president, the fire alarm “worked.”
Sources from the Provincial Firefighters Consortium have reported that the incident has forced more than a hundred residents to evacuate, “for their safety and depending on the location in the building.” Others “were confined to their homes,” they add. The fire generated, according to the same sources, a lot of smoke and many flames, and affected common spaces of the building, such as the landing.
Neighbors of the building have explained what the fire was like, Europa Press reports: “The cloud of smoke that rose was what worried me,” said Pedro, a resident of the 24th floor. Pedro explained that in his home they heard the alarm ringing. fire alarm and that, at first, they ignored it because it sometimes rings, but when he alerted again, he went out into the hallway and began to smell “like burning rubber.” “That’s when I got scared,” he says.
“We heard the ladies screaming from the balcony, where all the fire and smoke came out. They screamed: ‘Help, help.’ We started to notify all the neighbors as we could, I had to wake up the girl who was in bed and I saw that there was already so much smoke that it was impossible to go down. My entire hallway was already full of smoke,” she noted. Likewise, she has said that on occasions they went up to a private terrace “to breathe well” and she has admitted that the Campanar fire came to mind. “I knew that I wasn’t going to get to that point because it wasn’t the same, I couldn’t raise the fire to the top, but of course, the cloud of smoke that rose was what worried me. In fact, we have a whole throat, chest and everything, my mouth still tastes like rubber, but we didn’t think it could affect us so much up above, but we were worried about everything that is and we didn’t know if people had stayed in the hallways,” he explained.
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One of the men treated is a police officer who has been discharged on site. The remaining 14 people, including a minor, have been transferred to the Marina Baixa hospital in Villajoyosa in two conventional ambulances. Early this Monday morning they were discharged after being treated for smoke inhalation.
Relocation of affected people
The Villajoyosa City Council has had to relocate three affected people to a hotel, due to the damage their home has suffered. The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has asked that no one look for a boss, since the fire occurred just 10 days after the one registered in a building in the Campanar neighborhood in Valencia, where 10 people lost their lives. “There is no pattern,” he stated emphatically. Mazón has announced three days of mourning and has admitted the shock where the community is located. “It is difficult to manage,” indicated the head of the Valencian Executive.
🌃Nocturnal incidents:
(02:13h) Fire on the eleventh floor of a building in Vila-Joiosa, extinguished at 07:34h.
Mobilized:
➡️3 endowments @BomberosDipuALC
➡️1 Samu, 1 SVB and one unassisted ambulance(02:40h) House fire in Elche.
Mobilized:
➡️3…— Emergencies 112CV (@GVA112) March 4, 2024
The Emergency Information and Coordination Center (CICU) has mobilized a SAMU unit, a basic life support unit and two conventional ambulances. The fire was considered under control five hours after it started, around 7:30 a.m., at which time the consortium terminated its service.