After the fire in a Flensburg apartment building yesterday with two dead, investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing. A child and an adult died. Nine other people were injured – some had jumped out of windows. The injured were taken to hospitals by ambulance. It is still unclear where and why the serious fire in Flensburg’s Neustadt broke out shortly before 5 p.m.
Late in the evening at around 11:25 p.m., emergency services removed the body of the adult from the building, as a spokesman for the regional control center said on Friday morning. This was initially not possible because there was a risk of collapse. The building was propped up for recovery.
Mayor Fabian Geyer (non-party) was shocked near the scene of the fire last night and expressed his deepest condolences to the victims and their families. According to him, Interior Minister Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU) will come to the scene of the fire today.
Onlookers filmed videos
At the beginning of the large-scale operation, the situation was relatively confusing, said fire brigade operations manager Marco Litzkow of the German Press Agency. This was mainly due to the fact that there were both residents and onlookers on the streets.
The police appealed to the population not to share videos of the fire on social media. “People are affected, who of course mourn,” said a police spokeswoman. According to initial findings, gaffers made videos of the burning house and shared them on the Internet. “We will also consider criminal prosecution.”
The work of the fire brigade was also made more difficult by a collapsing stairwell. “The squads that went to rescue people or fight fires had to stop the interior attack after a short time because the stairwell collapsed or was no longer accessible,” Litzkow told the NDR’s Schleswig-Holstein magazine. In addition, according to the city, the top floor of the building threatened to collapse. The fight against the fire was therefore only possible using ladders and turntable ladders. In the meantime, 13 ambulances were at the scene.
According to the fire department, the house is no longer habitable after the fire. The residents were cared for in the evening and emergency shelters were sought for them. Several emergency chaplains were also at the scene of the fire.
