Three children among four dead as fire guts Spain building

VIGO, Spain — Three children and an adult died when a fire ripped through a building in the northwestern port city of Vigo early on Wednesday, officials said, just 10 days after another blaze claimed 13 lives at a nightclub in southern Spain.

The fire broke out around 4:00am (02:00 GMT) on the ground floor of a building in the central As Travesas neighbourhood, Carlos Lopez, a spokesman for Vigo city hall.

There were “around 30 people inside at the time”, he added. “There were four deaths: Three minors and an adult.”

The emergency services had earlier said all four were minors.

Spanish press reports said it was a mother and three of her children.

“It’s possible some of the victims among both the dead and the injured were brothers and sisters,” said an emergency services spokesman without giving further details.

Nine people were injured in the fire, three of whom were in serious condition. One was an eight-year-old girl, officials said.

Local press reports said the father and a sister of the children who died were among the injured.

The cause was not immediately clear but the emergency services were at the scene within 10 minutes and put out the flames “within two or three minutes”, said Vigo’s head of security Patricia Rodriguez.

“The reaction was immediate but the main problem was the smoke,” she said, describing the operation as “complicated”.

Earlier media reports said it had taken three hours.

Mayor Abel Caballero announced three days of mourning in this city of nearly 300,000 people that lies on the Atlantic coast in the north-western Galicia region, just 30 kilometres north of the Portuguese border.

Galician leader Alfonso Rueda said he was “devastated” by the fire and sent his deepest condolences to the families of the victims.

The fire came just 10 days after a deadly blaze on October 1 that killed 13 people inside a nightclub in the southeastern town of Murcia.

A Spanish court has opened a manslaughter probe into the tragedy at the venue which had ignored an earlier closure order.