Two people died and 12 were injured in a fire apparently sparked when a waiter flambeed a pizza at a Madrid restaurant and accidentally set decorations ablaze.
One of the dead was a restaurant employee and the other a customer, said the city’s mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. He said one person was in a critical condition in hospital and five others were seriously hurt.
Speaking outside the charred restaurant in the west of the city, the mayor said the fire appeared to have been sparked when a waiter flambeed a pizza and the flames caught plastic flowers decorating the ceiling and columns of the establishment, which contained about 30 diners and staff members at the time.
Witnesses told the El País daily that the waiter poured alcohol over the dish and set it alight. The waiter “had the plate in flames in one hand and the blowtorch in the other. He passed by a column with plants round it and in a matter of seconds it burned everything”, a diner who gave her name only as Ruth told the paper.
Firefighters were able to respond quickly as their station was only a few hundred metres from the restaurant, the mayor said. “It was very lucky,” he said. “The fire was put out less than 10 minutes after the alarm was raised.”
The Madrid fire chief, Carlos Marin, said people had run to the fire station to alert the fire crew.
The mayor said: “If they’d taken another four or five minutes, there would have been more victims because of the flames and smoke,” the mayor said.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident.
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