While the fire is spreading at lightning speed, the crowd that gathered around the Urbanuskerk in Amstelveen on September 15, 2018 does not see the fire brigade put out the fire. It causes a nasty confrontation, but can the fire brigade do something about the water shortage? And could the fire have been prevented? Now listen to the second episode of ‘Brand in de Urbanus.’
“People from my service have been attacked and they have reported it,” the officer of the Amsterdam-Amstelland fire brigade Rik Jonkman tells reporter Celine Sulsters about that evening. “One of my colleagues was bitten by a dog belonging to one of the people who were at the cordon. That’s not cool.”
Maayan Martens is a member of the voluntary fire brigade and lives in Amstelveen. He understands well where the emotions come from. “Of course I know the church very well. If you describe the Amstelveen city view, the Poel, the Urbanuskerk and the town hall are characteristic for me. If one such icon is on fire, it does something.”
Yet the violent reaction of the bystanders overwhelms him. “There is just yelling and cursing in your ear. You are sometimes grabbed and pushed in the other direction,” he describes. Maayan can put it into perspective: “I always say: People focus more on the uniform and the event than on the person in the uniform.”
Furthermore, Sulsters tries to find out the cause of the fire in this episode. Is someone guilty or is it just bad luck, as Clem Venne of the Friends of the Bovenkerkse Urbanus Foundation claims?