Eyewitnesses of the fatal explosion that startled Tuesday neighbors Cala de Bou draw a somewhat strange event. It was already seven o’clock in the evening, and therefore closed night in this area belonging to the municipality of Sant Josep, when an Italian citizen of 51 years, a resident of the neighborhood and who lived in an apartment block located very close to the scene of the incident, met his death inside his van, a vehicle that ended up burned.
For reasons unknown, the van (a Kangoo) started to burn at the height of number 14 of Navarra street. This is an eminently residential and very quiet area, especially at this time of the year, located next to a wasteland and at the back of a Suma supermarket. Alarm was immediately raised among the neighbors in the area. Some were walking their dogs in the open field and others were returning home after their day’s work. Those who were closer witnessed an unusual scene, as they told Diario de Ibiza the next day. According to this testimony, shared by several eyewitnesses, the owner of the van moved away from the van when it started to burn, presumably intentionally.
Witnesses began yelling at the victim to get away from the fire, and he began to do so, walking. At one point, however, he decided to suddenly change his mind, despite the shouts that kept asking him to run in the opposite direction of his burning vehicle. Again according to these witnesses, the Italian citizen retraced his steps without heeding the desperate warnings he heard from his neighbors and threw himself into the burning vehicle, which would confirm the main hypothesis of the authorities investigating the event, which from the outset pointed to a possible suicide.
Cylinder explodes
With the car completely engulfed by the flames, a huge column of black smoke rose into the sky and ended up alerting the few neighbors in the area who were not yet aware of what was happening. In a situation as dangerous as this, and surely unaware that in the trunk of the van there was a cylinder, as confirmed by sources of the investigation, there were neighbors who had the enormous cold blood, and perhaps also the unconsciousness, to think of saving their material goods. “Some neighbors went down to remove their car when the van was already on fire before it exploded“, says a witness. The car burned for a few minutes before exploding, fortunately for all those neighbors who risked their lives to keep their car, including the owner of the one parked just behind the burned van.
It was then that “two or three very loud explosions were heard”, as recalled by another woman who followed the whole event closely. The main hypothesis is that the first of these explosions corresponded to the vehicle’s tank and the second to that of the aforementioned butane canister.
The electrical substation
Three firefighters with a fire engine and a fireman were dispatched to the area. The fire was extinguished without any major damage. The deflagration of the vehicle could have had much more serious consequences, as the fire could have been caused by the fire the fire occurred right next to an electrical transformation center managed by the Endesa company. This is an electrical installation whose main function is to modify the voltage levels of the electrical energy it receives and distributes. If it had exploded, it would certainly have caused much more significant damage, as well as cutting off the power supply in the area. Fortunately, this did not happen and the deceased was the only victim.
Before the explosions occurred, agents of the Local Police of Sant Josep and the Civil Guard had cordoned off the area and cut off Navarra street, where many curious onlookers came to follow the developments of the event. Once the flames had been extinguished by firefighters, the Judicial Police of the Guardia Civil began their investigation on the ground and, when they had gathered all possible information, the body was lifted and the van was transported to the municipal vehicle depot in Sant Josep. As for the body, it was taken to the morgue awaiting the preceptive autopsy.
This Wednesday, the neighbors of the area woke up between disbelief for what happened and also ignorance, since some of them assured that they did not even know the facts. “I was at home and I heard a very loud explosion. I had no idea what it could be”, explained a neighbor in an adjacent open field, where the dogs returned to trot naturally only a few hours after the fire.
Early in the morning, a group of cleaners from the City Council of Sant Josep had just removed the remains of the event and were even forced to pour tar on the asphalt, as the fire had devoured the layer that was just below the van. Many small pieces of glass from the windows of the vehicle were still visible throughout the area. Many of them hit the house in front of the incident and under its walls still accumulated waiting for the operators to collect them.
Neighborhood resident
The victim was a neighbor of the neighborhood who lived in an apartment located in a block of Madrid street, perpendicular to Navarra street where he lost his life. In fact, it was one of his neighbors who recorded the first video of the fire, a document that quickly spread through social networks, practically at the same time that firefighters reported through this same channel that a car was burning on the public road.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.