Authorities have announced that a major fire, which ravaged a residential high-rise building in Valencia last month and claimed the lives of 10 people, is believed to have been sparked by a faulty electrical appliance.
Mayor María José Catalá of Spain’s third-largest city revealed that forensic police investigations pointed towards an accidental cause, likely originating from an electrical appliance within one of the apartments.
The inferno, which engulfed a 14-storey high-rise and an adjoining 10-storey block, housing a total of 138 flats, necessitated an ongoing investigation to ascertain why the blaze spread so rapidly.
“The first results of the national police investigation show the fire probably originated from inside the kitchen and that it was caused by a household appliance,” stated Pilar Bernabé, the national government’s delegate in Valencia.
Witnesses described the horrifying scene as the fire rapidly spread, fuelled by winds reaching up to 60 kilometres per hour, sending thick black smoke billowing over the western Campanar district of the city. The entire building was consumed within a mere 30 minutes, leaving approximately 450 residents homeless.
Initial speculations regarding the role of highly flammable cladding on the building in accelerating the fire were addressed, drawing parallels to the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster in London, where 72 lives were lost due to combustible cladding.
Tragically, just three days after the Valencia blaze, another high-rise fire claimed the lives of a child and two adults in the Alicante Province city of Villajoyosa.