In scenes echoing the aftermath of the deadly Murcia nightclub fire, Alicante City Council has sent fire inspectors to check the floor plan of the 135 tallest buildings in the city with the aim of detecting the possible existence of architectural coverings (cladding) similar to those used in the construction of the towers in the Campanar neighbourhood of Valencia that burned down last Thursday.
This was confirmed by the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, in a public appearance, in which he indicated that prevention had been chosen, with the commission, last Friday, of a report in which it was determined whether there are properties in which the same materials could have been used as in the damaged buildings so that, subsequently, the members of the Fire Prevention and Extinction Service (SPEIS) carried out an inspection. “We want the alarm not to spread; what has happened in Valencia is extremely exceptional,” he assured.
However, he stressed that the fundamental thing is “to be able to have information so that we know exactly what we can find, and it doesn’t happen like what happened in Valencia, where the firefighters found something unpredictable.” “That is essential to save people and to safeguard the safety of firefighters and emergency personnel,” he added.
In terms of the supposed unpredictability, since the Grenfell tragedy in 2017 in London, there have now been 18 similar fires where cladding has attributed to the speed and ferocity of the spread. For those who remember the Lakanal House fire in 2009 also in London, there have now been 46 similar fires.
Barcala has indicated that, once this information is collected, it will be possible to decide if any decision should be made accordingly. “We didn’t want to wait for anyone to request it,” he insisted. In any case, he has pointed out that it does not seem likely that the developer who built the buildings in the Campanar neighbourhood could have built any residential property in the city of Alicante. “From the information we have, it seems that she was a developer who worked essentially in Valencia and its metropolitan area and who disappeared many years ago; in any case, what interests us is the construction technique, so what we want is to know which buildings may have these characteristics and what the situation is,” he concluded.
Along these lines, municipal sources have reported, through a subsequent statement, that a SPEIS technical team, made up of six firefighters with technical qualifications in architecture and industrial engineering, has begun this task, which complements that of the team created three years ago to review the fire protection installations of these properties.
