Benidorm decrees three days of official mourning for the victims of the fire in Valencia

Benidorm City Council has announced three days of official mourning for the victims of the devastating fire in Valencia last Thursday, in which four people died, fifteen were injured and more than a dozen people are still missing. Likewise, the City Council has placed its official flags at half-mast as a sign of mourning, thus joining the three days of official mourning also announced by the Generalitat Valenciana.

At noon, the Municipal Corporation, headed by Mayor Toni Pérez, observed three minutes of silence as a sign of remembrance and solidarity with all those affected by this incident, in a rally that took place at Plaza de SS MM Los Reyes de España and to which numerous neighbours have also joined.

As is already known, the fire started around 5:30 p.m. yesterday for reasons that are being investigated in a building located at the junction of Maestro Rodrigo and General Avilés streets, in the Valencian neighbourhood of Campanar. The flames quickly spread throughout the property and an adjacent building, with a total of 138 homes where more than 400 people lived, which have been completely burned. Firefighters spent the entire afternoon trying to put out the fire and cool the area, as well as rescuing some of the people who had been trapped. The provisional balance speaks of four dead and 14 missing, in addition to another 15 people injured of varying severity.

This tragedy, which represents the worst fire that the capital of Turia has experienced in its recent history, the mayor of Benidorm has joined, on behalf of the city, in the expressions of “pain for this terrible fire that has destroyed the life of many families.”

Toni Pérez has moved “our condolences to family and friends of the victims” and, as the Valencian Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FVMP) has also done and has offered to “collaborate with the Valencia City Council in everything in these hard moments.”

Finally, the first mayor thanked and valued “the enormous work being done by the firefighters and all the professionals and volunteers of Health and Emergency Services to collaborate and help the victims, families and injured in this terrible event.”