Heavy fire puts apartment in the axis, also damaged two adjacent homes: « My wife was as white as a corpse » (Tielt)

The fire brigade was called on Sunday morning to the Kortrijkstraat in Tielt around 9.15 am. Thick, black smoke rose from the back of an apartment above automatic shop della Anna. It was immediately clear that it was a heavy fire and the fire brigade used the big resources.

Kortrijkstraat was completely closed and a large crane had to get on to get over the buildings to the back of the apartment. « The fire may have arisen on the back terrace, although the cause is not clear, » says Lieven Rijckaert, fire officer of Post Tielt. « The artificial grass with which the terrace was held, fire and that skipped to the cladding. »

White

The residents were not at home, so the fire was already going on for local residents who noticed. « We sat quietly at breakfast when we heard a kind of crackling, » says a local resident. « My wife went to look outside and came back as white as a corpse. There was a huge amount of black smoke and the flames were already struck. »

« Not much later the police were at the door and we had to leave our house for a moment. I suggested that the fire brigade could go back through our house to extinguish. They eventually pulled through the house with a snake and clambered on the roof of our kitchen to spray water from there. It is now very dirty with us, but we are happy to help that way.”

With the two apartments next to the fire, the damage was ultimately limited. A roof gutter suffered from the flames, a window jumped through the heat and a few roof gates melted. The house where the fire started burned out completely.

Camera images

« The damage is huge, » says owner Jurgen Dewitte. He runs the machine shop on the ground floor and built above an apartment that he rented. « Only a year and a half ago it was completely finished. This morning I received a phone call from someone at the machine shop that there was a fire and I could remotely see the smoke on the camera images from the shop. »

Colding cell melted

“The apartment is completely lost and also downstairs at the vending machines there is damage. They are very delicate and are full of electronics. Water has run on it through the ceilings and a vending machine no longer starts. The cold store at the back has also melted. We will only be able to measure the damage later. First we will brush with might in the hope that as many vending machines as possible will be available on Monday. ”

« The most important thing remains that nobody got hurt and that the fire did not completely spread to the adjacent apartments, the fire brigade was fortunately able to extinguish quickly. »