It was a hectic evening for the residents of Adrianus Benedictus van Lieshoutlaan in Waalwijk. A fire broke out in a house on Sunday evening. The residents were rescued by someone who took them out of the house with a ladder.
Local resident Guido Bergmans lives next to the affected house. He saw how the residents, a man and woman, were removed from the house using a ladder. “It was scary,” he says a day later. He and his wife woke up to the fire alarm.
“Then we started searching and found out that there was a fire next door. I was quite shocked, because you don’t know how big such a fire is.” According to Bergmans, the neighbors were hanging out of the upstairs window and could not get out themselves. “Smoke came out of the windows everywhere, which was quite shocking.”
Neighbor Henri Salz and his wife also woke up from the fire alarm. They heard the alarm go off while they were in bed. “Our bedroom is at the front, so we pulled the curtains aside to see what was going on. We saw that someone had already placed a ladder against the facade and that two people were climbing down through the window.”
Salz didn’t see flames. “It was mostly smoke.” To be on the safe side, he and his wife turned off the ventilation. “Of course you don’t know how bad it’s going to be.” Then they went to check on the neighbors together with other residents until about one o’clock in the morning. Around two o’clock someone came to board up the door. “It was an exciting night, yes.”
Pitch black
Then the street became quiet again. “Everything is pitch black inside,” says Bergmans. He has not yet spoken to the affected neighbors, but his wife has. According to him, they live in a close-knit neighborhood. “When we need each other, we are always there for each other.”
There is a sofa in the front yard of the stricken house. Locally it is said that the fire was caused by an overturned candle, but the cause has not yet been officially announced. The house is uninhabitable for the time being. One of the residents reportedly suffered smoke inhalation and was taken to hospital.