MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Firefighters ventured for the first time into a 32-story Madrid office building gutted by fire and came out Wednesday saying some parts run the risk of collapse.
The central core is relatively stable but there are zones that are very damaged and unstable, said Medardo Tudela, deputy director of Madrid's firefighters and a member of the four-man inspection team.
``There are zones that are at high risk of collapse,'' he told reporters.
The team clambered up a fire escape that survived the raging fire that broke out Saturday night in the Windsor Building in Madrid's financial district and burned for 18 hours.
Town hall says the building will be demolished piece by piece.
Tudela said the team made it up to the 28th floor, the last one where people had actually worked, but could not get in because the door was jammed.
The team took photographs and will hand them and other evidence over to police investigators, he said.
The firefighters found increasing deterioration as they went up and were unable to gain access to some floors.
Other teams are working to stabilize what is left of the building while others were drawing up demolition plans, Tudela said.
``The state it's in causes an impact. On the upper stories you can see from the staircase that the floors are gutted, empty,'' said Tudela.
The firefighters volunteered for the hazardous work of inspecting the charred structure, which was subjected to temperatures in excess of 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 Fahrenheit).
The blaze began on or near the 21st story and spread upward, causing the partial collapse of the upper part of the 106-meter (350-foot) building.
The fire then swallowed the lower stories before being put out near the base.
The building had been undergoing renovations, in part to install automatic sprinklers. Some of the floors already had them but not the 21st floor.
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