On Sunday around 8 p.m., a chimney fire broke out at a house along De Linde in Sint-Kruis (Bruges). The fire quickly spread through the insulation under the thatched roof. “There were initially small flames visible on the outside of the chimney, but soon a glow appeared around the chimney and in the roof itself,” said Major Jeroen Bonte. “Due to the fact that the thatch was fairly thick, the temperature rose sharply under the roof. It was extremely difficult to fight the fire.”
The fire brigade immediately called for reinforcements. They tried to make openings in the roof, but ended up using a crane to remove the thatch from the roof. The emergency services worked until 5 am on Monday morning to extinguish the fire, but the house was completely destroyed. “There is a lot of water damage, which means the house has been declared temporarily uninhabitable,” Bonte continues. “Fortunately, no one was injured. We were able to save some of the owners’ personal belongings.”