The two firefighters who died while battling a car park inferno in Madrid this week have been named as Sergio Benavente Molero and Jesus Aguilar Rodriguez.
The brave men, aged 27 and 34 respectively, perished while attempting to extinguish an underground blaze sparked by an electric vehicle in Alcorcon on Wednesday afternoon.
Their grief-stricken colleagues were in floods of tears on Friday as a wake was held in their honour.
The two men were close friends who had uploaded various videos on social media together. They were also among the thousands of emergency workers who helped clean up the devastation in Valencia last October following the deadly DANA floods.
The tragedy unfolded on Wednesday when a Porsche Taycan crashed upon entering an undergound garage, causing its lithium battery to spark and setting it on fire while stationed next to a row of parked cars.
A source close to the investigation told ABC newspaper: ‘These types of fires are extremely dangerous. Not only because they originated in an electric vehicle with a lithium battery, but because there are a multitude of fuels in cars (gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, etc), and there were many more parked, and on top of that, in a very confined space.
‘The low, tightly closed roofs reduce the amount of air, making it almost impossible to breathe, even if they were wearing self-contained low-pressure breathing apparatus (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and carbon dioxide) and self-protection bodyguards.’
Another source added: ‘If an accident involving an electric battery is very serious outdoors, in a basement it’s a mousetrap.’
Firefighters raced to the scene after the driver of the Porsche escaped the garage and alerted the authorities.
The evidence suggests that Sergio became trapped inside the garage while battling the fire, following an explosion that caused part of the roof to collapse.
It is believed that falling debris cut off the hose that was being used by firefighters to guide them from the almost pitch black depths of the inferno.
Sergio most likely died of asphyxiation or was burned alive by the high temperatures, reports 20Minutos.
While Jesus managed to escape and get outside to safety, he heroically went back in to rescue Sergio but never returned. Tragically, he ran out of oxygen. His charred body was later pulled from the wreckage.
The flames took over two hours to put out and left at least 15 other people injured due to smoke inhalation.
A third firefighter, Guillermo, remains in hospital after being evacuated from the scene in a critical condition.
Jesus’s grieving father believes firefighters were unprepared to deal with this type of fire.
He told reporters: ‘The fact that they were unprepared to deal with fires of this type is demonstrated by their deaths. Something has gone wrong.
‘Electric cars are already here, and firefighters will have to take appropriate protective measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.’
