2023-10-01 18:45:05
At least 13 people were killed in a fire in a discotheque in Murcia, southern Spain, on Sunday. “Further victims are possible,” said the rescue workers. The city administration also stated that the death toll could rise even further. Four people survived the devastating fire, some seriously injured.
The emergency services were reportedly alerted at around 6 a.m. on Sunday morning after an “extremely violent” fire broke out in the discotheque in the Atalayas district of Murcia. A police spokesman told the AFP news agency that there was a birthday party in the discotheque on Saturday. Not all of the guests at this celebration have been found yet. The recovery of possible additional bodies is the top priority. There is currently no trace of the cause of the fire.
After there was initially talk of six deaths, the death toll continued to rise over the course of the day. Already in the morning it was said that the search was still underway for missing people in the rubble of the discotheque. Forensic experts and investigators have been on site since dawn, the police said on the online service X, formerly Twitter.
Mayor José Ballesta said firefighters arrived on site around 7 a.m. and brought the fire under control within an hour. The recovery of the bodies is made more difficult by the high risk of the building collapsing, Ballesta said. The search is ongoing.
Four people were injured in the fire, two of them seriously. The injured are two men aged 41 and 45 and two women aged 22 and 25. They therefore suffered from smoke inhalation.
The circumstances surrounding the cause of the accident were still unclear. Contrary to initial information, the police assumed on Sunday afternoon that the fire had broken out on an upper floor of two discos, both of which were originally in the same building, as police spokesman Diego Seral said. These are the “Teatre” discotheque and the “Fonda Milagros” discotheque. Images showed thick smoke rising from the roof of the building. A third discotheque, “Golden”, was also affected by the fire. The bodies were all found in the “Fonda Milagros”.
Video footage from the city fire department showed firefighters with long hoses in their hands approaching bright orange flames inside the building. There were bar tables around them, drinks still visible.
Three days of mourning announced
A man named Jairo, who said he was the father of one of the victims, told journalists that his 28-year-old daughter was missing. She left a voice message at 6:06 a.m. in which she was crying. “Mom, I love you, we are going to die, I love you mom,” screams the young woman, while calls to turn on the lights can be heard in the background. According to her father, the daughter has not been reachable since then.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his “compassion and solidarity” to the victims and their relatives on the online service X. He offered “all our support and cooperation” to the president of the Murcia region.
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Mayor Ballesta announced three days of mourning. According to him, more than 40 firefighters, twelve emergency vehicles and 20 police officers were on site. Murcia’s bars and restaurants remained closed on Sunday as a mark of respect for the victims.
In Spain there have been several disasters in discos in the past. In 2017, 40 people were injured when a ceiling collapsed in a packed nightclub on the holiday island of Fuerteventura. In 1990, 43 people died in a fire at a discotheque in the northern Spanish city of Zaragoza.
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