Cameraman and photographer Dave Hendriks from Geldrop experienced exciting moments on Wednesday when he captured the enormous fire in the De Peel nature reserve. The fire flared up rapidly and threatened to enclose him. “The fire brigade told me to get out of here.”
Armed with a professional mouth mask, safety glasses and helmet, Dave braved the flames in De Peel. “I had parked my car on the edge of the nature reserve and then continued on foot for miles to get closer to the fire,” he says.
He managed to get to the area where the Limburg fire brigade tried to prevent the fire from spreading further. “They are doing everything they can to keep the fire under control,” he recalls. “But when it turned out they didn’t have enough manpower, I was told to get out of there because it wasn’t safe anymore.”
“The fire can flare up very quickly, sometimes ten meters per second.”
“The dangerous thing is, the closer you are, the less you see,” says the cameraman. “Not only is there a lot of smoke, but you’ve also lost the overview.”
The fire is unpredictable due to the changing wind direction. “You would expect the fire to always go with the wind direction, but it doesn’t,” says Dave. “Sometimes the fire also moves against the wind direction. And that can go very quickly, sometimes ten meters per second. Then it gets really exciting, you know.”
The fire creates a lot of smoke and can flare up very quickly because the area is currently very dry. “Then such a fire really starts to lead its own life. You are actually powerless as a fire brigade,” says Dave.
Then there is the phenomenon of crown fire, fire that spreads through the meter-high treetops. “That is really gigantic and crackles like crazy”, he knows from experience. “You can’t run from that, it goes that fast.”
Not much later, five fire trucks arrived from Southeast Brabant with about forty firefighters to help the Limburg firefighters. Nevertheless, the force of nature was too great. “The area they wanted to save is completely gone,” says Dave.
By two o’clock, some 34 hectares had already gone up in flames and the fire is still spreading. Two fire fighting helicopters are currently also being used to fight the fire from the air.
“If you’re not careful, you’ll fall into a five-foot-deep pit.”
Getting away quickly in the peat area is not without risks. “Many potholes are hidden in the grassy ground. “If you’re not careful, you’ll fall five feet down. I stretched myself a few times,” said Dave.
Reporter Noël van Hooft of Omroep Brabant, who is also at the fire, saw how Dave came out of the burning forest area completely sweaty with his camera. “He first had to drink half a bottle of water to recover a bit,” he says.
Despite the dangerous situation, the cameraman keeps a cool head. “Beating the news is my job,” he says. “There are certain risks involved, I am aware of that. It can always go wrong. But if I really threaten to be trapped, I jump in the first red car and then it is gone.”
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