Serious residential house fires in Spain for the last decades.

So far, four deaths have been confirmed as a consequence of the fire that broke out in two buildings in the Campanar neighborhood of Valencia on Thursday. The search for another 19 missing continues. This is added to the many victims of fires reported in residential buildings in recent years in Spain. The causes of the fires have ranged from short circuits to poorly extinguished cigarettes and nard stoves.

The most tragic disaster

occurred on July 7, 1992, when twelve people - nine Polish citizens and three Spaniards - died of asphyxiation in a fire in a housing unit in the Madrid town of Mostoles.

Fires with the highest number of deaths

were registered in nursing homes: in Moncada (Valencia) on January 19, 2022, in Zaragoza on July 12, 2015, and in Seville on February 8, 2010.

In a study conducted by the Mapfre Foundation and the Professional Association of Fire Technicians in Spain in 2020, it was noted that fires or explosions claimed the lives of 164 people, one less than in 2019. Of these, 119 occurred in residential homes, where an average of 47 fires occurred every day, mainly due to the improper use of sockets and extension cords.

To these figures must be added the number of people killed in fires in other residential buildings, such as boarding houses for the elderly, student dormitories or prisons, as well as in shacks, industrial or abandoned buildings housing the homeless or homeless.

Below is a chronology of the most serious residential house fires in Spain since 1992, in which at least three people died, taking into account fires in homes for the elderly and geriatric centers, since that is where the victims lived.