One dead and thirteen hospitalized due to a fire in a nursing home in l'Ametlla del Vallès

BarcelonaA man has died and 13 people have been hospitalized for smoke inhalation in a fire, now extinguished, at a nursing home in l'Ametlla del Vallès. According to Civil Protection, the fire broke out around 10:30 p.m. inside the facility, which has a ground floor and three upper floors, and affected about eighty people, including users and workers at the center. According to Civil Protection, the fire started on the first floor for reasons still unknown, and the body of the fatality was found in one of the rooms.

The residents of the nursing home "have significant vulnerability, and this made managing the fire very complicated," the mayor of l'Ametlla del Vallès, Jan Santaló, explained this Wednesday on Catalunya Ràdio. Some of the residents were evacuated, while 42 were confined to their rooms. The Departments of Health and Social Rights have announced that they will transfer the thirteen residents who are currently admitted to other social-health and geriatric centers.

The Generalitat Fire Department activated a device with 13 crews and about forty personnel and were able to extinguish the flames in half an hour. Even so, the fire had already affected several rooms on the first floor and the smoke had also reached the second and third floors. The Minister of Health, Olga Pané, indicated in statements to SER Catalunya that the victim is a 53-year-old man and that the door to the room seems to have been "blocked".

The Minister of Social Rights, Raül Moreno, has explained that the residence affected by the fire is a "complex" center where social services and health services are combined. Of the 80 places it has, 30 are geriatric and 50 are for people with various pathologies. The users have "conditions that can cause more complexity both in the transfer of people in an emergency situation and in their own social accompaniment".

For his part, the fact that the fire occurred at night complicated communication with family members. In the case of the most affected users, communication was by telephone, while the rest were initially contacted by email and follow-up has also been carried out this Wednesday to "reassure them".

Firebreak and normality at the center

The Medical Emergency Service (SEM) activated 16 units and the hospitalized individuals are in less serious condition at medical centers in Granollers, Mollet del Vallès, and Sant Celoni. With the exception of these individuals, the rest of the users have already been relocated to the unaffected areas of the building, located on Llerona street in L'Ametlla. Regarding the thirteen hospitalized people, the Government has anticipated that they will have a new destination this very Wednesday, but two of them will remain hospitalized due to respiratory problems; one of them is in the ICU.

Most of the building was well isolated by the activation of fire doors, and activity this Wednesday is already at a reasonable level of normalcy. All the entity's professionals have been working since early in the morning to "try to normalize the service as quickly as possible," as detailed by the manager of the Vallparadís Foundation, Ramon Ramells, which manages the facility: "The people who are at the center are being attended to correctly and normally."