A fire that broke out in a retirement home in Milan, Italy, overnight killed six people and injured at least 80, Italian emergency services say. Three people were in a critical condition on Friday.
The fire started in a first-floor room of the facility.
It was extinguished quickly and did not spread to the rest of the building, yet produced a vast quantity of toxic fumes.
Two residents burned to death in their room, while four others died from breathing the fumes, Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said at the scene.
“It could have been [even] worse. Having said that, six dead is a very heavy death toll,” Mr Sala said.
Five of the victims were women aged between 69 and 87 years old, while the sixth was a 73-year-old man, according to AGI news agency.
Mr Sala said the facility housed 167 people.
Firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari said the cause of the fire was under investigation, but that it was likely accidental.
Firefighters intervened at the “Home of the Spouses” residential facility in the south-eastern Corvetto neighbourhood shortly after 1am.
They evacuated about 80 people, including many in wheelchairs, while another 80 or so were taken to hospital, local firefighters’ chief Nicola Miceli told RAI public television.
He described rescue operations as “particularly complicated” due to heavy smoke, which limited visibility, and the fact that many residents could not stand without aid.
Lucia, a local resident, said she saw some of them “gasping for air” at their windows, holding rags over their faces to protect themselves from the fumes.
She said rescuers “were wonderful” as they helped everybody.
“Those who could walk, they walked them out, those who could not, I think they were carried out in their bed sheets,” she said.
The tragedy came after Earth’s average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday.
The planetary average hit 17.23C, surpassing the 17.18C mark set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. (ABC)