"Everything went very fast". Adriana Banu, administrator of the building that burned in Valencia, told this newspaper with astonishment. She was right. The flames started around 5 p.m. on the seventh floor of a two-tower building. The fire, of which the cause is unknown but was possibly a short circuit, started on the highest floor, 15 levels high. Right on the north face of the housing block. The strong west wind, up to 70 kilometers per hour, caused rapid spread to the south and to the upper floors.
The contagion was very fast. Eyewitnesses reported that in less than 40 minutes the two towers were on fire. The surprising thing, as a firefighter pointed out to this newspaper, was that the fire moved at enormous speed along the façade, made of flammable material, according to engineer Esther Puchades, author of the expert report on the building for previous small accidents. Specifically, the façade was built with polyurethane that covers the brick and is behind the aluminum sheet that adorns it.
The building was built in 2005, at the height of the real estate boom, by the Catalan developer FBEX, and is located in one of the most luxurious areas of Valencia, in the Campanar neighborhood. Composed of two towers, it has 143 homes and was inhabited by more than 400 residents. The apartments, at the time, cost more than 300,000 euros, according to neighbors; figure that at that time was considered very high.
Salvador Puigdengolas, industrial engineer and former dean of the Official College of Industrial Engineers of the Valencian Community (COIICV), pointed out to the newspaper Las Provincias that possibly the insulation material used with these plates may have acted as an air chamber, facilitating the spread and generating a chimney effect.
The truth is that in a short time, the entire building was subjected to the action of flames. The strong wind not only helped its spread, but also made it very difficult for firefighters to put out the fire.
In that same sense, professor Antonio Hospitaler, who was in the Windsor Tower in Madrid after it burned in 2005, has detailed that the spread through the façade is "much faster than an open-air fire" and that, if it had If it had been built with brick and not with a combustible material, "it would not have spread."
Hospitaler has specified that the Technical Building Code since 2006, and with recent modifications that have occurred, --after 2017-- "prevents this type of situation and that the façade materials are not combustible to avoid the spread of fires for her."
"The façade has a physical property in which the flames stick to it and, when doing so, they rise at full speed and then the fire spreads throughout the façade quickly. This has caused the windows of the homes to break and proposes the fire inside the houses," he detailed.
The engineer has indicated that the investigations must determine the origin, whether the calls began inside a home, went to the façade and, from there, to the rest of the building, or if they originated from the façade itself.
In that sense, this Thursday's fire reminds him of the fire that occurred in the Grenfell Tower on June 14, 2017. "Exactly the same thing happened. It was a fire that spread through the façade and that caused an update of the European regulations in this regard. "It is very recent, if it is ten years old or 15 years old, then this regulatory change does not affect it, it was already done," he pointed out. In that case, "the fire broke out inside the building, in the offices, and from there it came out to the façade and spread through the façade to the floors above."
As for the danger of collapse, "apparently there is none, but you never know." "Concrete withstands fire quite a bit, it has good resistance. What happens is that you don't have to enter the building right away, you have to wait because the concrete can collapse later, after a few hours, because it has a physical-chemical process inside that It causes it to deteriorate over time. The heat stays inside, it doesn't come out until it cools down. It has happened, in some cases, that hours have passed, the fire has gone away and the building has fallen. But I believe that here "The level of fire that has occurred is not high enough for that," he explained.
