Heavy Brand lays the office building of Houtbedrijf in As: « Upon arrival, office area was already in light -light » (Ostend)

Shortly before 9 pm, fire brigade and police received various reports of a fire in the industrial zone. Houthandel Cras is located near the A10 motorway, against the Zandvoorde exit. A lot of motorists saw a pitch -black plume of smoke from the company. They alerted, together with a few employees from surrounding companies, the emergency services. They were quickly on the spot in the end.

Showroom

« On arrival, the situation turned out to be quite serious, » says fire brigade captain Dries van der Veken. « The office part of the company was in a lighter side on arrival. We tried to limit the fire to the office area with man and power. After all, there was a danger that the fire would spread to the showroom, right next to the offices, and to the wood storage. In the end we also succeeded. »

Aid zone 1 spread another message via social media to keep windows and doors closed near the fire. A lot of men were needed to prevent the fire expanding. Fire station Oostende was therefore reinforced from various other fire brigade posts such as Gistel, Bruges. « The majority of the outbuilding consists of a wooden skeleton building, » Van der Veken continues. « That means that the fire was given every opportunity and therefore raged violently. Our main proceedings was that expansion of the fireplace. In the first instance, the building was also difficult to enter through our teams due to instability and so we had to extinguish the fire from the outside. »

Only if the fire was almost extinguished, could the fire brigade enter the building to extinguish. Fortunately there were no injuries in the fire, but the damage is huge. The entire office building has been destroyed. There is currently no clarity what the cause of the fire could be. The company managers arrived on the spot, but were too excited to respond immediately. The police closed the entire neighborhood for traffic.