A gas leak was discovered this morning in the ‘t Noordeinde apartment building on Hoofdstraat in Hoogeveen. An unknown number of residents subsequently had to leave their homes. They are temporarily housed in De Tamboer theater.
Several residents smelled gas this morning and raised the alarm with the fire brigade, who arrived around 8:30 am to investigate. After an inspection, the suspicions of a gas leak turned out to be correct.
The fire brigade decided to evacuate a number of apartments. According to a bystander, about twenty people had to leave their homes. Firefighters and technicians from Enexis are still working on closing the leak.
Part of the Hoofdstraat was closed for a while, but is now open again. It is not clear how the gas leak could have occurred.