FIREFIGHTERS battling a blaze that gutted a two-star Malaga hotel have finally ended their operation – just 47 days after flames first tore through the building.
Emergency services were first called to Hotel Ibis on Pasillo de Guimbarda in the early hours of May 25 after a fire broke out in a ground-floor cafe before rapidly spreading to the adjoining hotel complex.
The hotel’s evacuation plan was activated immediately and all guests and staff were safely evacuated without injury.
However, extinguishing the fire proved far more difficult than expected.
Within a week, firefighters and city officials concluded that the building’s unique wooden floor structure posed too great a collapse risk to allow personnel inside, especially after a partial collapse occurred on the first floor.
That means efforts to put out the inferno were restricted to pumping water in from outside, leaving pockets of intense heat inaccessible and with no option but to wait for the fire to burn itself out.
The blaze appeared to have been successfully extinguished on several occasions – most recently just 15 days before firefighters finally withdrew, a full month after it first ignited.
The five-storey building, which housed 189 double rooms and 47 parking spaces, has been completely gutted with demolition now considered inevitable.
The site’s owner, Grupo Accor, is widely expected to construct a new hotel in its place, likely taller than the original.
Malaga mayor Francisco de la Torre has given his backing for a four or five-star replacement – and one built, as he said, ‘without wooden floors’.
Before the fire broke out, the hotel was waiting on planning permission to add a further three floors and be upgraded to a three or four-star establishment.
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