Madrid, Spain
Reuters
—
Some 160,000 people from Catalonia, in the northeast of Spain, received the warning of remaining in their homes this Saturday after a fire in an industrial estate caused a toxic cloud of chlorine over a wide area, according to emergency services.
The fire in a company cleaning products started at 2:20 am local time (8:20 pm this Friday Miami time) in Vilanova I La Geltrú, a town 48 kilometers south of Barcelona, and generated a huge column of chlorine smoke over the area.
“If you are in the affected area, do not leave your home or your workplace,” said Civil Protection in the Social Network X.
Nobody was injured in the fire, Catalan emergency services reported this Saturday, but five localities residents received a message on their mobile phones urging them to remain in their homes.
“It is very difficult for chlorine to set fire, but when it does it is very difficult to extinguish it,” said the owner of the industrial estate, Jorge Vinuals Alonso, to the local Radio Rac1 radio station.
He added that the cause of the fire could have been a lithium battery.
The trains that had to go through the area suffered withholdings, the roads were cut and other events were canceled.
The fire is controlled, according to TVE, the Civil Protection spokesman Joan Ramon Cabello.
