Sven was woken up at home on Sunday morning by the fire brigade in Sint-Michielsgestel. He fell asleep with a pizza in the oven. That almost went very wrong. Sven is not the only Brabander with such a fire story. In fact, the list of these types of incidents is anything but short in our province. And usually it is bystanders or neighbors who play a crucial role.
Attentive neighbor
This is how things went wrong in Breda in 2018. A neighbor and his girlfriend discovered the fire in an apartment complex on Roeselare Street. They alerted the apartment resident who was sleeping at the time. The neighbor had probably fallen asleep with a cigarette. The man was not seriously injured.
READ MORE: Apartment residents in Roeselarestraat Breda extinguish fire with buckets of water
Woman rescued from caravan
Another nice story about observant bystanders at a ‘cigarette fire’. At the Fort Oranje campsite in Rijsbergen, now closed by the municipality, a fire broke out from a mobile home in the summer of 2016. The resident had fallen asleep with a cigarette in her hand. She was removed from the house in time by other residents of the campsite.
Such cigarette fires are becoming more common. In 2011 in Etten-Leur and in 2013 in Helmond, for example. In 2014, such a fire even had a fatal outcome.
READ ALSO: Camping residents pull woman from burning caravan
Fry pan on, brain off
Apartment residents on Rubinsteinstraat raised the alarm in 2016 when they saw smoke on the fourth floor. When the fire brigade arrived, they immediately saw the cause of the fire: a pan of oil on the fire that had caught fire. In the room a man was sleeping on the couch. The man did not have to go to the hospital. The house was blackened by the fire.
By the way, frying fries also went wrong in 2018 – then in Etten-Leur.
READ ALSO: Fell asleep with deep fryer on: flat on fire
Bystanders save again
It seems to be a common thread in this story: observant bystanders who intervene. This was also the case in 2015 on the Kortestraat in Breda. A forty year old woman had lit a candle and fallen asleep. A passerby saw flames coming from a window and alerted the fire brigade. The victim was taken to hospital with burns to her arm.
Last year it went wrong in the same way in Veghel due to a candle.
READ ALSO: Woman injured in fire caused by candle in Kortestraat in Breda
Act of valor
In an act of heroism, a man from Rijen escaped death in a fire in his house on Zaaren on Monday evening. At the beginning of the evening, the man had turned on a burner on his stove to heat a pan, but had fallen asleep. A bystander saw the smoke and at the same time saw that no one intervened. So he climbed in through the roof and rescued the man from the burning house.
READ ALSO: Man saves life of sleeping neighbor during fire in Rijen