Until Witte got a second call. “I answered and he said, ‘The pavilion is on fire and there is no way to save it’. That was fifteen minutes after the fire brigade was called.”
The owner of the beach bar used to live next to Beach Club Texel, but for some time now he has settled in Alkmaar with his young family. Previously he could not go to the scene of the disaster. “The boat was not sailing yet. I arrived at 7 a.m. and the police and fire brigade were already gone. Now people are trickling in to see what is going on.”
Hope for camera footage
The first sight was desolate. Once we arrived at what was once his company, there were only a few chairs left on the terrace. “I have felt better before,” says Witte with a sense of understatement. “Now I’m trying to figure out for myself what it could be. Maybe a short circuit, we had a lot of trouble with rats under the pavilion, that was a real problem. Something could have happened to that. The dryer wasn’t on, so that’s possible. neither was it.”
Hope is now pinned on camera images, Witte hopes to be able to find out where the fire started. But because routers and cameras have been melted by the fire, for now it is a matter of waiting until they are removed from the cloud.
Witte owns several properties and had just sold a pavilion. “Because of the little one. When I still lived next to the pavilion, I was working seven days a week. I was just trying to get more regular in my work. This turns everything upside down.”
No wedding
It is not clear to him what to do now. When his wife has taken their baby to daycare, she also comes to the place where Beach Club Texel once stood.
“For now I have no idea what to do, I hope it will become clear during the day. I have to speak to my brother anyway. He is supposed to celebrate his wedding in the pavilion in the spring, I have to tell him still tell me that that’s not going to happen.”
A police spokesperson told NH that the Forensic Investigation team is currently investigating. It is not yet clear whether this is a case of arson.