A day after the fire that engulfed a 12-story building in the "Arlis" complex, at "Farmacia 10" on Dibra Street, investigations have produced the first results: four people have been arrested and four others have been placed under investigation for violating safety regulations at work and negligent destruction of property.
Police announced today that the administrator of the complex, the manager of a market on the first floor of the building, the engineer in charge of the works and the administrator of the company that built the facade have been arrested. Meanwhile, investigations have also been launched against the owner of the complex, the builder and the market employees.
According to preliminary data, the fire is suspected to have started in the back of the market, where waste had been accumulated and no measures had been taken to remove it. It is also suspected that the administrator of the complex had not checked the functionality of the fire protection systems.
The toll remains heavy, with 11 people injured and dozens of families already facing significant material damage. But beyond the individual responsibilities that are being investigated, the dynamics of the fire have raised a deeper problem, the way buildings are constructed and controlled in Tirana.
Lack of rules and control
Although the initial cause is related to a possible accidental source, the speed with which the flames engulfed the facade and spread vertically has raised serious questions about the safety of the structure in the "Arlis" complex and the very way in which the facades of new buildings are constructed.
The facade was clad with thermal insulation materials such as polyurethane, widely used for energy efficiency. This material is not prohibited, but in fire conditions it acts as an accelerator of flames, spreading them from floor to floor.
Meanwhile, it must be said that the incident is not isolated. Five years ago, the facade of another building in the same complex was engulfed in flames during construction, without any obvious preventive measures being taken.
Experts emphasize that the problem lies not only in the material, but in the lack of a clear legal framework for its use.
Urban planner Doriana Musai explained to Citizens.al that materials such as polyurethane accelerate the spread of flames and make firefighters' intervention very difficult.
"We have not taken any measures to ban such materials on facades. Europe controls where they can be used or designs them so that, in the event of a fire, they are able to self-isolate," she explained.
Ervin Mici, a fire protection engineer, estimates that more than 90% of buildings in Tirana contain potentially hazardous materials.
“The lack of rules and control creates a situation where any material can be used without real restriction,” he told Citizens.al, questioning the way it has been built in Albania over the last 30 years.
Mici added that recently he and other experts in the field of construction have been part of ongoing meetings with the Ministry of Interior to draft a protocol that aims to regulate many existing gaps, one of which is the issue of classification of materials.
"We still don't know if it will be a law, a VKM or a directive. It is something that has not yet been decided and will take time to be finalized," he added.
Individual responsibility or system problem?
The arrests made by the Police suggest a wide chain of responsibilities, from the daily management of the building, to its construction and design.
However, experts argue that responsibility cannot be reduced to individuals alone.
According to legislation, every construction must have a designer and supervisor who approves the materials. In practice, according to Ervin Mici, these roles remain formal, while the real decisions are made by investors or builders.
"We know that in Albania the decisions are usually made by the owner, but he is an administrator, not a technical manager. It is the technical manager who should decide, while the supervisor is really just a technician in Albania," Mici pointed out, implying that this way responsibility is not addressed.
In a public reaction to the event, Prime Minister Edi Rama declared that the burned building would be rebuilt by the builder, emphasizing that this would be done despite the fact that the cause of the fire was not related to him.
But for experts, this approach does not address the fundamental problem, construction standards and control over materials, aspects that seem to have not been addressed for a long time by institutions that remain in discussion about construction and fire safety protocols.
The incident at the "Arlis" complex adds to a series of similar incidents in Tirana, including the case at the same complex in 2021, or the one in the Bus Park area in 2023, which did not bring about any noticeable changes in standards.
The repetition of these cases suggests a structural problem, where risk is not an exception, but part of the construction model.
In this context, the question is no longer just who caused the fire, but whether this case will lead to real changes, or whether it will remain another episode that ends with formal accountability and without genuine reform.
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He completed his master's studies in the department of Journalism and Communication Sciences at the University of Tirana. She has been reporting for more than four years in Citizens.al on issues of culture, urban development, feminism, etc. She is also a contributor to other local and foreign online media, and has worked in the editing of various materials. She is the author of the podcast "Pezull" on Citizens.al and is engaged as a coordinator of projects related to the empowerment of young journalists and migration issues.
