“You can’t imagine what it does to us,” says one of the local residents. “I have also lived here for a long time. I grew up here. This is surreal. Because it is a very old church. But also when you see how it was built. It was really built around that church. The Vondelkerk, it is an icon.”
A fire brigade spokesperson said around 2.45 am that everything is being done to ‘save what is still there’. “But yes, you can still see the wind, the flames, the sparks coming off. At the moment it is actually still a matter of maximum effort to preserve what is still there. But it is happening very quickly.”