The investigating court in Valencia, Case No. 9, which is examining the fire that razed two buildings in the Campanar neighborhood and claimed ten lives, has authorized residents to enter their homes to collect personal belongings. Access also extends to the parking area where the vehicles were left during the incident.
The magistrate granted this permission after the National Police informed him that the measure would not interfere with the ongoing inquiry. Naturally, the authorization excludes the 86th apartment in the 14-story block where the flames began, the focus of the investigations. The tenant of the apartment where the fire started says electrical problems occurred two years earlier.
Civil-forensic verification at the Legal Medical Institute
The lead investigator has already received the laboratory results from the Police Scientifics used to identify all ten victims and has forwarded the data to the Legal Medical Institute for cross-checking.
The court will contact the families of the deceased to arrange collection of personal effects and will then authorize the delivery of the remains and the issuance of burial or cremation licenses for funeral rites, once all procedures are completed.
The process has been reported by regional outlets to be moving ahead as families await confirmation of the identifications, with genetic comparisons conducted at the central laboratory of the Police Scientifique in Madrid as part of the ongoing DNA verification process.
Retrieving the remains
The initial expectation was that if scientists could obtain genetic samples even from the most damaged remains, the comparison of biological markers with those collected from the families at the Valencia Tourism Center would be completed in the morning on Wednesday. A one-day delay has occurred, but this remains the final step that will allow relatives to appear at the court and complete the necessary paperwork to recover their loved ones.
As previously reported by regional media, families have awaited the completion of the identification process, which depended on the ongoing DNA matching conducted by the National Police’s genetics team at the central laboratory of the Police Scientific in Canillas, Madrid.