It stinks of smoke and the havoc is enormous, the day after the barn fire that got out of hand in the Cornelis Trooststraat in Eindhoven. In the row of destroyed houses, only the student house on the corner withstood the fire. Students Veerle and Tom are still recovering from the shock. “We were very lucky that the fire did not enter us,” says Veerle.
The bicycles in front of the student house at Cornelis Trooststraat 4 in Eindhoven make it clear that there is still life in the brewery there. While three houses next door are completely destroyed and uninhabitable, the five students can continue to live there. Inside it still smells of smoke and the windows of the kitchen are cracked by the fire. Tom points to white spots on the tiles in the garden: “These were garden chairs that had been melted by the fire. Even the resin layer on the fence on the other side of the garden has melted due to the heat,” he says.
“It still feels a bit unreal, I came down the stairs this morning and then you look into the garden and then you suddenly see that everything is black and then you think: oh yes. You don’t notice anything in the house and then you walk to behind and then you see everything black again, that is quite intense,” says Veerle.
was still in bed
The student from the Achterhoek who studies at Eindhoven University of Technology was still in bed on Sunday morning when the fire broke out. “I heard people talking outside, banging on doors and people shouting ‘fire, fire’ and then I thought: that’s not good. I ran outside with my roommates and saw our shed on fire.”
“We only have damage to the outside of the house, the fire brigade was here right on time. The fire brigade said: ‘if you want, you can just go back.’ It still smells a bit like smoke, but given the damage to the other houses, I think that’s fine,” says Veerle. Tom and Veerle can therefore stay in their student house and are busy studying for the exams again. “Just sitting comfortably in the garden, that no longer seems an option for the time being. “Our garden chairs are also half burned, unfortunately it won’t be for a while,” says Veerle.
carp
The students are upset with the neighbours’ carp. The fish are now in a water-filled wheelie bin. “The fish were in the neighbours’ pond, but they don’t want them back. They were thrown in the container, but we can’t do much with them either. So we are actually looking for people who want some koi carp,” says Veerle. A garden hose has been temporarily put in the bin to replenish fresh water in the hope that the fish will survive.
Tom was at home in Almere when the fire broke out. Of course he got all kinds of messages about the fire. When he saw the damage, he thought: “what a mess, this is really bad. I was shocked, it was a lot more intense than I had thought”. Despite the enormous damage to the neighbors, Tom still thinks that it is livable in the student house: “The smoke in the house is not pleasant, but everything is still intact, I am very grateful for that, because it could just as well have been our house.”
This is what the fire looked like from above.
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