Late on Wednesday evening, a meter-high fireball made it difficult for the fire brigade to fire a house in Gesundbrunnen. A compressed gas tank on the flaming roof of an eight-storey building had exploded. Nobody got hurt.
There was an explosion on the roof of an eight-storey building in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen. The detonation happened while the fire brigade was extinguishing a fire there on Wednesday evening. According to the emergency services, no one was injured.
According to previous knowledge, a compressed gas tank on the house in Neue Hochstrasse had exploded. As a result, a fireball was created, said a fire department spokesman. In the explosion, flying debris would have spread to the neighboring roofs, the spokesman continued.
The fire therefore extended both completely over a flat roof area of around 300 square meters and into the eighth floor below. According to the fire brigade, the tenants on this floor had to leave their apartments and were looked after by the German Red Cross.
The enormous bang could also be heard several kilometers away from the scene of the fire – for example at Plötzensee or in Pankow, according to reports.
After the extinguishing work late on Wednesday evening, the fire brigade also used a drone to search the adjacent residential buildings for possible debris. These were thrown onto other roofs and onto the sidewalks around the scene of the fire.
The Berlin fire brigade was on site with around 100 emergency services.
According to the fire brigade, reconstruction work is currently underway on the house. However, it is still inhabited.
At around 9:30 p.m., eyewitnesses reported at least one loud bang and a meter-high fireball that could be seen from afar. A local resident initially reported loud screams. “Open the window, open the window,” he told an rbb reporter. Looking out the window, he saw many firefighters and police officers. He then went into the street and saw a fire on the roof. Then there was an extremely loud bang. “There was a blood-red flame,” he said. “It was a massive explosion in terms of volume,” he recalled.
Shortly after the fire broke out, the fire brigade wrote on Twitter: “We receive a lot of calls”.
The fire department did not provide information on the extent of the damage. Fire investigators from the police are on the process, said the fire brigade spokesman.
Broadcast: rbb 88.8, 08/25/2022, 6:00 a.m