A major fire broke out in a laundry in the Utrecht village of Driebergen-Rijsenburg on Saturday morning and then spread to a hardware store. There is also a fireworks store on the same site. The fire brigade managed to keep the fire away from that building, partly by keeping it wet. A spokesperson for the safety region told the ANP news agency that according to the owner of the storage, many of the fireworks in the warehouse had already been sold.
“The flames are quite high, several companies are threatened,” said the spokesperson earlier on Saturday. “Everything around it shields the fire brigade from the fire.” The fire brigade evacuated 36 people from a nearby residential area as a precaution.
The fire brigade had called for reinforcements from nearby places, including Zeist and Bunnik. The laundry and the hardware store have been lost, according to the fire brigade.