Wednesday’s inferno in a residential tower in Antwerp has left multiple people feared dead, and the city has been on high alert in the search for any who may be left behind. You won’t find a confirmed death toll from officials just yet, and as of midday, the men in uniform were saying the fire was still not in their hands.
The danger is far from over. According to the police, you could put 200 or more in this 10-storey, though some had it at close to that figure. With our teams still in there, no one can say for sure how many might be in harm’s way.
Search continues inside smoke-filled tower
You can see where the rescuers have been on the upper levels – thick black smoke was coming out of the windows while a ring of emergency vehicles held the perimeter. It is very much a life-or-death situation in there, and they are having to rotate in and out to deal with the heat and what little you can see.
Some of the first word on the web was of deaths and those badly hurt. One of the workers put in a post to stand with his fellows on the ground, and to say a house fire is about as bad as it gets. It says something about the pressure on both the side of the law and the ones living here.
How the blaze unfolded
It all came to a head when the fire department got a 9:53 AM call about a 'raging fire‘ in the Linkeroever part of town. They think it made its start on the eighth floor, but nothing is set in stone on where exactly it came from.
They’ve cleared the building, but you can’t be too careful, so the room-by-room checks have gone on as the smoke has moved. We know for a fact some have been hurt, even if we don’t have the final numbers. Police will tell you the place was empty of residents when they first made their move.
Mass response and hospital readiness
With the possibility of a lot of casualties, the medical plan has been called in so the hospitals are standing by. We’ve also had help come in from the likes of Waasland, Kempen, Rand and Rivierenland to back up the Antwerp crews.
Even by late morning, things were still at their most perilous. “The fire has not yet been put out and is not yet under control,” Marie De Clercq of the fire department put it, and that kind of uncertainty makes the job of a rescuer harder.
Official guidance for neighbours
The police have been asking those in the vicinity to look after themselves from the smoke while we work to clear the stairwells. Here is what they are telling the locals to do to keep fumes from getting in:
– Close your windows and doors
– Turn off the ventilation if you have to
The neighbourhood context
This is in Linkeroever, on the other side of the river from the centre of town, where you have a few of these high-rises near the main roads. If you look at the pictures, you’ll see the corridors we’ve put in place to get gear up to the top of the tower.
What investigators will examine next
We are looking into what started this. The story is it was the eighth floor, and we have to figure out how it ran through the building like it did. As of this afternoon, we can’t give you a date on when anyone can go home.
We haven’t put out the hard figures on the dead or the injured. Right now, we are focused on making an account of every single person. Once we have the fire, the rest of the agencies on site will be doing their due diligence.
Antwerp is in for a long haul and some hard news. We expect to have some straight answers in the next round of briefings on the toll, the state of the building and what we can do for those who have been put out of their homes.
