Yesterday Valencia experienced a tragedy similar to the one that shook London in 2017 with the Grenfell Tower fire. Not in terms of victims, fortunately, but in form and substance. In the middle of the afternoon on Thursday, a raging fire broke out in a 14-story residential block located in the Campanar neighborhood, which as the hours went by spread strongly until leaving the structure burned and leaving four dead and between nine and 15 missing. With the fire now under control, a crucial question now remains: How could the flames spread so quickly in a building that is less than 20 years old?
There are already theories on the table. And debate.
Tragedy in Campanar. From a large residential complex, with two housing blocks of 14 and 10 floors that totaled 138 homes and accommodated around 450 residents, to a burning torch. And all in a matter of hours. The Campanar neighborhood, in Valencia, suffered an episode yesterday afternoon that quickly generated comparisons with the Grenfell Tower fire, recorded in 2017 in London. The fire started around five-thirty in the afternoon in a house on the seventh floor and spread at an astonishing speed. In less than an hour it had already spread across the facades. The balance: the burned structure and a toll of at least four dead and between nine and 15 missing.
A “son” of the brick boom. The building was once promoted by Fbex, which began to build it in 2005, at the height of the real estate bubble, and finished it years later, in 2008. Like other firms that grew in the heat of the brick fever, Fbex could not weather the crisis of the last decade. After growing at a good pace and expanding throughout Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Valencia, in 2010 it filed for bankruptcy proceedings with a debt of 640 million. Shortly after, in 2011, it reported that it was about to close after the bank’s rejection of the haircut it had proposed. In its last declared financial year, 2010, it recorded negative results that were close to 157,000 euros.
“An innovative aluminum material”. Although the Campanar residential blocks were completed more than a decade and a half ago, we still have a promotional video in which Fbex praised the qualities of the complex. Specifically, it presented them as “two avant-garde and unique buildings” equipped with “facades covered with an innovative Alucobond-type aluminum material.” The firm did not stop there and insisted: “Maximum quality in construction materials with modern facilities, finishes and equipment.” His statements had been forgotten for years. Until yesterday, when the flames made their way at an astonishing speed through the construction, which ended up charred.
Although we will probably have to wait to find out how the fire could spread at such speed, there are those who have already focused on the use of materials. To be more precise, what could have been used in the exterior cladding of the façade and its possible flammable capacity. The big question that follows, in view of the promotional video prepared at the time by Fbex, is evident: What exactly is Alucobond-type aluminum?
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Reviewing the materials. Today, the Swiss company 3A Composites presents Alucobond as the registered trademark of a material that contributes to the ventilation and energy efficiency of facades. On its website it provides a description of its composition and, most importantly, its behavior in the face of flames: “Alucobond is a composite panel made up of two aluminum cover sheets and a core filled with hardly flammable or non-flammable mineral aggregate, synonymous with sustainable construction quality and the highest design standards. The result is a kind of sandwich panel.
The coating, key. As the architect Diego Toribio explains in a detailed thread in , leaving a space. Understanding what the covering of the buildings was like is not a minor issue: in the videos taken yesterday, while the firefighters were helping the neighbors, I could see how the flames spread quickly through the plates.
“What fell from the façade were the remains of the aluminum sheets that had flown,” says engineer Esther Puchades in statements reported by . The heat would have caused the screws and the rest of the materials to expand and could come off. If the fire advanced at such speed it was largely because it spread both horizontally and vertically. Technical engineer David Higuera points out that the former could have been favored by the use of synthetic floors, among other elements. The strong gusts of wind and high temperatures yesterday could also have worked in their favor.
The role of polyurethane. Puchades, who is also vice president of the College of Industrial Technical Engineers of Valencia (Cogitival) and was even in charge of the appraisal of the property, left a key statement yesterday that has since been replicated in media throughout the country. As she explained to the À Punt network, the building is covered in polyurethane, a versatile material widely used in construction for its thermal and acoustic insulation and waterproofing properties. “That’s what caused it to burn in less than half an hour,” she concluded.
“The suspicion is that it is a ventilated façade and that a layer of polyurethane has been applied to the deepest part of that façade,” Puchades expanded shortly afterwards in statements to Radio Nacional, in which he recalled that this material, “when heats up, it becomes a burning liquid. Manufacturers insist, however, on its safety and use studies in which insulation with this polymer would have responded better than other mineral fiber insulation.
Adding voices. Puchades is not the only one who has pointed out polyurethane. A professor in the Department of Civil Construction Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Vàlencia, Antonio Hospitaler, shares the hypothesis, which suggests that the fire could have spread virulently due to a ___tail in which the material, heat and strong forces were intermixed. winds. A similar opinion was expressed by the expert appraiser Juan Antonio de Diego, who agreed that the polyurethane on the façade turned the building into “a chimney.”
The expert remembers that the construction that burned yesterday in Valencia had a facade ventilated with Alucobond and hidden polyurethane behind it. “It is the reason why the fire has spread so quickly,” agrees De Diego, who attributes the use of the material to “the vices of the construction of the brick boom.”
But… Did it comply with the regulations? The million dollar question. “From when the building was built, possibly yes. We will have to analyze it carefully when the license was granted, the construction, the designer… And, in short, all the regulations that were applicable at that time,” Puchales responded yesterday on RNE when asked They raised precisely that question, whether the building complied with construction standards. Hospitaler recalls that the European regulations that allow the use of polyurethane changed in 2017, precisely after the Grenfell fire.
It also states that since 2006, and with changes applied after 2017, the Technical Building Code “prevents this type of situation and that the façade materials are not combustible to avoid the spread of fires through it.”
“In 2005, the bad practice of polyurethane was not so widespread. Today it is not used, at least not in that way,” says Puchades about the material. In an interview with the EFE agency, the expert states that its use is legal in construction and was used regularly in the 2000s and 2010s, coinciding in part with the brick “boom.” To this day it continues to be incorporated into buildings, although with barriers that act as firebreaks to prevent the flames from spreading quickly if a fire starts.
The 1996 regulations. Upon completion in 2008, the building would have been subject to the 1996 fire regulations, updated years later, albeit with a transitional period. The code dedicated to construction materials – he specifies – would allow composite. Among other references, it states that “the materials inside false ceilings or raised floors, both those used for thermal insulation and for acoustic conditioning, as well as those that constitute or cover air and ventilation ducts”, must belong at least to the class M1, as combustible, but non-flammable materials are called.
