The Valencia Police Homicide Group, leading the probe into the Campanar building fire that burned on Thursday afternoon, leaving at least nine dead, one missing, and many injured or exposed to smoke, has begun taking preliminary statements from witnesses as well as from officers who were first on the scene as part of the emergency response team.
These initial steps mark the beginning of an investigation aimed not only at uncovering the fire’s immediate causes but also at understanding why flames spread so rapidly across the facade. The blaze jumped from the first tower, 14 stories tall, to the second, turning the entire building into a colossal beacon of fire shrouded in dense black smoke.
To piece together the sequence of events, the Homicide Group is assisted not only by fire investigation specialists from Valencia’s Scientific Police brigade but also by the General Police Scientific Command, which dispatched its experts from Madrid yesterday. According to Levante-EMV, the digital edition of the Prensa Ibérica group, of the 15 officers from the General Command who traveled to Valencia early yesterday, two specialize in fires and seven focus on crime-scene investigations.
All of these professionals, along with the head of the Homicide Group, began yesterday inspecting the building, concentrating on the apartment that occupied door 86 on the eighth floor of the 14-story tower where the fire started, which the building’s superintendent says was vacant.
Although it is still early to speculate about the fire’s origin, several indicators point toward an accidental ignition with a possible electrical source. The building lacks a gas installation, and all utilities run on electricity.
Flames raced along the facade
The second issue for investigators is why the fire spread so quickly, complicating evacuation and later the suppression efforts.
While awaiting the police report, most attention centers on the building’s exterior cladding, finished with a vented facade comprising aluminum composite panels.
These panels are 5 millimeters thick and consist of two aluminum sheets with a core designed to be non-flammable today, but when the building was constructed between 2005 and 2008, the core was polyethylene. Polyethylene is a plastic that can ignite at around 137 degrees, and because the panels are not sealed together but leave at least a one-centimeter gap between panels to allow for air and water movement, flames could travel quickly along the facade. Winds gusting up to 60 km/h fueled the spread, creating a cross of fire that escalated within minutes across the building.
The flames wrapped the panels in burning material, breaking them free as they fell onto the street and spraying burning polymer from within. The resulting black splashes remained visible not only on panels that burned but also across the facade and the nearby sidewalks.
The architecture of the complex, covering nearly a full city block, adds to the challenge. The two towers house 138 homes in total, yet there is only one street-level exit, not counting the ramp for vehicle access to the two underground parking levels, and a single entry to the pool area at the rear of the complex.
With these factors, firefighters ordered residents to stay indoors—a common safety precaution in older constructions with standard interior walls—but not necessarily safe in a building bearing such a high combustible load.
Was there sufficient water pressure?
Firefighters faced serious difficulties extinguishing the blaze, which often requires interior attack in a burning building. They attempted to fight the flames from inside, but the enormous fuel load turned the tower interior into an inferno, forcing crews to switch to exterior attacks. Some firefighters even had to jump from first-floor terraces to a safety mat to avoid being overwhelmed by the flames.
A second challenge emerged: the prominent overhang at the lower floors, designed to give first-floor residences terraces, made exterior water application nearly impossible with standard hoses. Special height-equipped units were brought in to rescue a couple stranded on a balcony of the second tower. By that point, the decision was to allow the structure to burn in a controlled manner while maximizing cooling around the perimeter.
Another question the inquiry will need to answer is whether the water pressure was adequate and whether the fire hydrants were fully operational. In the earliest moments, difficulties in delivering water to the facade were reported, compounded by strong winds and the heat radiating from the burning building.