The Fire Brigade Zone Antwerp was called up on Friday afternoon just after 3.30 pm for a large fire in the Boekenberg castle. The roof construction was completely ablaze and the fire also spread to the rest of the building. The roof of the building including a turret collapsed completely. “We stayed on site until about 2 o’clock on Friday night with a few teams, including the aerial platform, to extinguish a few smoldering fires,” says Marie De Clercq of Fire Brigade Zone Antwerp. “We went to do checks on Saturday morning at 10 am and around 2 pm, but they were negative. The building is very unstable. The contractor will now ensure that it is propped up.”
The cause of the fire is not yet fully clear. Initially, the police kept all avenues open. “The judicial lab and the fire experts visited the site on Saturday,” says Wouter Bruyns of the Antwerp Local Police. “It appears from their preliminary findings that there is no indication of the use of fire accelerators. Deliberately setting the building on fire therefore seems less likely. The fire may therefore have started accidentally, whether or not through the intervention of someone else or as a result of a defective device.”