A complete residential complex caught fire in Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia. The fire brigade assumes 100 victims. The fire is still not under control in the morning.
At least three people were injured in the fire at a residential complex in Essen. They were taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation, a fire department spokesman said. About 100 people were brought to safety from the complex. That roughly corresponds to the number of people living there. You haven’t been able to check that exactly yet, “but that’s about right,” said the spokesman.
The Essen fire brigade has “definitely” never experienced a fire of comparable proportions. That is a completely unknown magnitude. About 150 emergency services are on site. The fire is not yet under control and there is no end in sight to the extinguishing work. “It is very difficult and sometimes dangerous for the emergency services at the moment because they have to go into every apartment,” said the spokesman.
The alarm went off at 2:15 a.m. Accordingly, the entire apartment block with around 50 apartments burns, the fire brigade assumes 100 people are affected.
The emergency services were therefore hampered by the huge flames at the entrance to the building. They gradually combed through the individual apartments in search of other people.
Local residents housed in university lecture hall
As a police spokesman said, the fire object is an L-shaped building complex. The buildings caught fire one after the other for reasons that have not yet been clarified. The houses were evacuated and the residents housed in a nearby university lecture hall
Nothing was known about a possible cause of the fire. Because of the smoke, the Essen fire brigade warned residents to close windows and doors.