(Madrid) The spectacular fire which left 10 dead at the end of February in Valencia, in eastern Spain, when the fire spread in a few minutes to an entire building, was of accidental origin, “probably” caused by a household appliance, authorities announced Monday.
“The scientific police have established that the causes of the fire are accidental, and that it was apparently caused by one of the household appliances in one of the apartments,” the mayor of Valencia, the third largest city, told the press. of Spain, María José Catalá.
The councilor explained that the investigation will still have to look into the reasons which caused the fire “to spread, to spread at such speed”.
“The first results of the national police investigation show that the fire probably came from inside the kitchen and that it was caused by a household appliance,” Prefect Pilar Bernabé confirmed to the media.
The fire, one of the most tragic in recent years, shocked the country and left hundreds of people homeless in Valencia, the largest city in southeastern Spain.
PHOTO ALBERTO SAIZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The disaster, which broke out on the afternoon of February 22 in a 14-story building with 138 apartments, spread at lightning speed to the entire building.
Several experts had blamed the material used as insulation on the facade of the building to explain the extremely rapid advance of the flames, as during the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London in June 2017, in which 72 people lost their lives. life.
Around ten days later, another deadly fire in a residential building killed three people, two adults and a child, in Villajoyosa, near Alicante (South-East).