The Commission of Inquiry also concluded that the trapped firefighters in 2008 could not be rescued. Their breathing air ran out before enough equipment could arrive to rescue them. According to the researchers, the main reason for this is ‘the absence of a good and practiced procedure and the fact that not all fire officers in Drenthe at that time were well trained to make a difference as fire technical manager’.
In an extensive additional investigation, the committee stated, among other things, that the usual deployment procedure should be reversed in the event of fires in industrial buildings. “In De Punt, in 2008, the firefighters immediately switched to a so-called interior attackjust like a house fire. In the event of a fire in industrial buildings and warehouses, we have advocated first deploying a defensive exterior attack if rescue is not necessary,” said the professor.
The fire in De Punt eventually led the fire service to work differently when dealing with fires in offices and industrial buildings. “It took several years,” says Helsloot, “but nowadays the firefighters are not allowed to immediately start an interior attack, they must first thoroughly investigate the fire. This also means that the fires are less easy to fight, but a scenario such as that in The Point completed cannot occur again.”
All in all, the fire in 2008 and the research that followed made a great impression on the professor. “I was not so much shocked by how they worked then, that was commonplace, but it is special that we were able to learn so much from it. An investigation often leads to the improvement of communication, for example, in this case the entire I often use the band in De Punt as an example in my lectures,” Helsloot concludes.