Powerlessly, pub manager Henk-Jan Hadderingh watched the scene: white smoke from the roof of his café Ponybar in Gieten. In the fire, which broke out at the end of the morning, two houses were so damaged that they have been declared uninhabitable. His café remained almost completely intact. “May be happy that it is still there.”
Hadderingh was called by a friend with the message that smoke from the roof of the building on the Brink. “Then I dropped everything and I stepped in the car to the pub.” That, while he was just about to leave for his holiday destination. He was powerless to see how he cleared the fire brigade. “I want to go inside, I felt. I wanted to get everything out, keep everything,” explains Hadderingh. “I was behind a shot, I couldn’t do anything else.”
The most valuable items were removed from the cafe by the fire brigade. While he had to watch from a distance, he tried to keep himself under control. “You don’t really know what your brain is doing. You are shocked, you vibrate, from the adrenaline. You have to watch what those guys are doing. Drama.”
Yet Hadderingh was lucky, he looks back. “The café, despite a little bit of smoke, has been completely preserved.” The fire started in the back of the farm, where there were also two apartments. They have been declared uninhabitable by the fire brigade.
“There is a large fire wall between the pub and the house. It has offered salvation for the café. For us it is lucky that it is still there.” For his neighbors who live in the apartments, it looks different. The damage is huge there. Hadderingh emphasizes that he is very sorry for the owner, who is also one of the residents of the building. The owner and the other occupant of the building were not at home at the time of the fire.
For Haddering it ended with a hisser, but it could also have been very different. “It is dramatic anyway that something goes on fire. But the pony bar is a household name, everyone in the village knows the pony bar and wants to help. It would have been a great pity if it had burned down. A piece of nostalgie, a sixty -year -old pub. We can be happy that he is still there.”