Yesterday, a fire completely destroyed the warehouse of the citubo supply company located at next to Ibiza airport in the industrial park of Can Frígoles. A fire that the head of the Parque Insular de Firefighters miguel Sevilla, described it as “very dangerous” due to the large amount of flammable material that was stored in the facilities, such as solvents, paints, fabrics, plastics or wood, among others, as he explained.
One of the neighbors of one of the houses closest to the site of the incident had to be attended by 061 for smoke inhalation. The head of the Local Police of Sant Josep remained with her in the house, where there was a lot of smoke and was very close to the flames, until they could leave it.
No personal injuries were reported thanks to the quick action of the company’s workersas soon as the alarm sounded and the fire was detected, they evacuated the facilities, which some of them went all over the premises to make sure that no one was still inside. They also evacuated the adjoining buildings.
There were no casualties, however, the facilities of the Ibizan company were “totally unusable”according to the mayor of Sant Josep, Vicent Roig, at mid-afternoon, with the fire already controlled and perimetered and waiting, as explained from the Consistory, to the structure of the ship collapsed. Roig said that the destruction of Citubo’s facilities is a “tragic” event, while the Councilor for the Environment, Felicia Bocú, lamented that about 40 people may be out of work after the fire.
It was just a few minutes before one o’clock in the afternoon when the alarm went off. Firefighters were alerted and images of a dense column of black smoke jumped from cell phone to cell phone. The smoke could be seen from miles away and from most of the island. The fire started outside the warehouse, at the rear, at a point of the facilities where pallets were stored (both loaded and empty), which are highly flammable. Sevilla pointed out yesterday afternoon that the origin of the fire was still unknown, which will be determined by the investigation that is already underway and which will also collect testimonies about what was being done in the area where the flames started.
In the extinguishing work, in addition to the twenty firefighters mobilized from the Parque Insular, the industrial work vehicles of the airport firefighters participated. Also bucket trucks of the company Bufí, vehicles of Grúas Ibiza to move away from the area the cars that could burn, as well as the Guardia Civil and the Local Police. Precisely, it was the agents of a patrol of the latter body, who were at the airport in a control to detect pirate cabs, who raised the alarm, according to the mayor. “We have mobilized all the means we have, both material and human, to deal with the flames,” said the island councilor for Environmental Management, Sustainability, Innovation and Transparency, Ignacio José Andrés.
Fire and tons of gasoline
The risk and fear, explained the head of the firefighters of Eivissa, was that the fire spread to the adjoining ship, a rentacar, in which there were more than 200 vehicles, also electric, and a tank with a pump of 14 tons of gasoline: “There is stored a lot of fire load, we could have had something much worse”. As explained yesterday late in the afternoon from the Island Park, the fire did not affect the adjacent building: “The walls have been heated, but has not suffered any damage”.
The airport road in the vicinity of the burned building had to be closed to traffic at least twice to allow the maneuvers of the emergency teams, so that throughout the noon it was complicated both to get to the airport and to leave the terminal due to traffic jams. There were some tense moments, such as the panic attack suffered by an occupant of a vehicle heading towards Eivissa when she saw the flames. From the road one could see not only the impressive columns of smoke but also, through the windows of the building, the flames consuming all the products that the company sells: carpentry, hardware and plumbing materials, furniture, bathroom supplies and household appliances, among others.