Some discomfort has spread among the fire department due to the criticism that some neighbors have directed against them, considering that they did not act firmly to remove the couple and their two children who were trapped in their apartment from the apartment. Sources from the force have indicated that a firefighter risked his life in this operation and that he informed his colleagues by radio, while trying to go up to rescue them on three occasions, "I'm dying, I'm dying."
And that the body's protocol is to keep families on the floors if there is no option for them to safely leave them to the common areas such as stairs to escape.
The matter comes from the story of M. and R. and their two children, one of them newborn. The firefighters told them that given the virulence of the fire they should stay in their home until they could rescue them. Enrique Chisbert, Valencia's fire chief, has already explained this morning that the protocol that the firefighters have is for neighbors to stay in their homes - "they are the safest place if the building guarantees sectarian conditions" - when There is a risk in an evacuation complicated by the existence of a lot of smoke. "The opposite could be a disorderly evacuation that could cause multiple victims," indicated the head of the firefighters.
Sources from the body who request anonymity add several things. The first is that they are "destroyed" by the information that has been disclosed. The second is very clear: "those people died because the fire was extremely virulent, not because the firefighters confined them." In addition, they add that "taking people out onto the stairs with smoke and such a high temperature is crazy." "It's our protocol: Confine," adds another firefighter.
In fact, a member of the force points out that the other day another fire broke out in another home in Valencia and when the firefighters arrived they found all the neighbors on the street. Several of them had to be treated by health workers for smoke inhalation.
The couple and their two youngest children died in the bathroom while she was saying goodbye to her mother on the phone, according to what a neighbor of the complex who knew this family told El Mundo yesterday. "They were talking until the signal went dead."
