The two discourages burned in Murcia in October 2023 did not have “with the compartmentalization conditions required for firefire purposes”, and doubled the length of the evacuation routes allowed by law. This is collected by an expert report requested by the head of the Court of Instruction number 3 of Murcia that investigates the case and confirms important security failures in the structure of the premises and breaches of the legislation in anti -capital prevention.
The report, to which the country has had access, has been prepared by an expert-architect that relies on the inspection that made the remains of the premises in June 2024 and in the documentation linked to a municipal inspection of March 2018, when the industrial ship in which the discos had already been divided into two premises. In fact, although both worked with a single activity license, which in addition, the expert considers it proven that it was two different businesses, “run by two different holders” and who “independently made the maintenance of their fire protection facilities.”
Although police investigation undoubtedly places the origin of the fire in the Teatre disco, and the report draws attention to the serious breaches of the regulations on evacuation routes of that room. The deceased were in the box further from the only exit door that the premises had and, to reach it, they would have to have traveled a distance of 55.36 meters, when the maximum allowed by law is 25 meters. The expert recalls that building regulations establish that “in no case can an establishment have its evacuation through another”, even even if the two are from the same owner. Even so, in its report, it calculates the distance of that box to the exits of the Teatre Room, crossing the doors that were on the inner wall that separated the two stores, to analyze if the evacuation distances would have been met if the entire ship was considered a single business. In that case, the doors to the street would be four (three on the facade and one in the rear), and the maximum allowed length of the evacuation routes would rise to 50 meters. But the closest exit to the tragedy box would continue to be the one that was at 55.36 meters, which also in this case would breach the regulations.
The Teatre Room did comply with the distances of the evacuation routes, according to this report, but the expert recalls that the Firefighters and the Scientific Police certified that the rear exit that the room had was unused, since it was closed with bars and locks.
Regarding the separation of the premises, the report explains, the rooms should have “sectorized” to be watertight compartments that prevent the propagation of fire, but this separation was not done correctly. The main facade, the horizontal separation of the premises, and their cover, according to the expert, did not have the level of fire resistance that the law establishes for this type of business. In addition, “there were air conditioning facilities that crossed from one establishment to the other”, so the “hidden spaces” and the “steps of facilities” electrical or supplies were not correctly compartmentalized. That absence of adequate compartmentalization would have led to the passage of the fire of one disco to the other.
The wall that separated the two stores did have the right resistance, but the two doors that were opened in it is not accredited that they were “fire doors”, and they did not have antipanic drive devices for evacuation. “None of the establishments had the compartmentalization conditions required for security purposes against the fire,” concludes the report.
