“Mom, I love you, we are dying”: this is the desperate message, a voice message sent by one of the victims of the fire that broke out at dawn this morning in a nightclub in Murcia, southern Spain. A message for his mother. “I love you,” says the 28-year-old.
At least twelve people died and four others were injured in the fire at the Teatre nightclub in the Las Atalayas district. The woman’s father played the voice for journalists: “He sent his mother an audio recording saying what was happening, that he was leaving.” “You could hear the screams, they couldn’t breathe,” said Jairo, through tears broken voice.
The number of victims is preliminary: rescuers do not rule out the possibility that there could be more victims. “At the moment we are looking for a lot of people, we don’t know anything yet,” confirmed the mayor of the city of Murcia.
According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the fire apparently started from the La Fonda restaurant, which is located next to the theater.
There is also no news about a group of friends celebrating a birthday at the club last night.
The fire consumed the roof, the flames quickly spread everywhere and the fire department had difficulty extinguishing it.
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There are currently four injured: two women aged 22 and 25 and two men aged 41 and 45, all intoxicated by smoke.
Vice President Yolanda Diaz spoke on behalf of the government on
The disco burned down again in 2009
It is not the first time that a fire has broken out in the discotheque: back in June 2009, some cables in the facade caught fire and forced the venue to be evacuated. The Murcia region declared three days of national mourning.
The precedents of Zaragoza and Madrid
This morning’s fire is the deadliest in Spain since the 1990 tragedy at the Flying nightclub in Zaragoza, in which 43 people died. However, the greatest tragedy to occur in a Spanish nightclub occurred in Madrid on December 17, 1983, when flames ravaged the premises of Alcalà 20, causing the deaths of 81 people, most of them very young. This disaster caused a political uproar as investigations revealed that the disaster was made worse by the failure of the lighting system and a closed security door. After this fire, Spain adopted numerous regulations to increase safety in the premises.
Article is being updated…