Three people were admitted to hospital on Saturday after the outbreak of four fires in just over 13 hours in Orihuela, Catral and Torrevieja.
All of the fires were in private homes requiring the attendance of firefighters from four stations in Orihuela, Torrevieja, Almoradí and Crevillente.
There were injuries at two of the fires where it was necessary to treat two women and a baby, all of whom were suffering from smoke inhalation. Fortunately, the prognosis in all three cases was slight.
The outbreak in Calle Albellón in Catral was reported at 2.15pm on Saturday afternoon, in the home of a mother and her baby. As the fire took hold both were inside but the prompt action of a relative kept the flames at bay as he tackled the fire with an extinguisher. Firefighters from Crevillente had extinguished the fire by just after 3.15pm
A spokesman for the Provincial Fire Brigade said that the fire was started in the living room where curtains caught fire caused by the proximity of a heating appliance.
A few hours earlier firefighters from Parque Vega Sur (Torrevieja) responded to a fire in a house of at Ricardo Lafuente Aguado Ronda de Torrevieja. The owner, a 66-year-old woman, was taken by a Basic Life Support ambulance to the Torrevieja hospital after inhaling smoke.
There were two further outbreaks in Orihuela neither resulting in personal injuries. The first at a single-family building on Calle Ecce Homo required the intervention of 16 firefighters, from the Orihuela Park and the Almoradí sub-park.
The fire started in the basement and generated a dense black smoke that affected the two upper floors of the building with flames reaching between 400 and 500 degrees. The flames destroyed two vehicles and two high-end motorcycles as well as gym equipment and iron weights.
The second of the Orihuela outbreaks fires was reported in a 3-storey house on Calle Monserratinas. The fire started on the ground floor when a chimney caught fire, quickly spreading to the other two floors of the building. There was only one person inside at the time, but he was able to escape to the roof from where he was eventually rescued
