A large fire on Friday night reduced Tommy van Schijndel’s car company in Gemert to ashes. The fire raged in the workshop on the Molenrand. There’s nothing left of that. On Saturday morning, the owner came to inspect the damage. “It is intense to see. This is a bit of a swallow.”
Defeated, Tommy walks to the workshop. At least what’s left of it. “There is nothing more than a piece of outer wall. Everything that was inside is gone.”
Tommy and his girlfriend Samantha were just in bed when the fire alarm went off. “I went downstairs to see what was going on. When I opened the connecting door to my business, the smoke was already coming towards me.”
“I thought everything was going to end.”
Tommy quickly drummed his family out of bed. “When we were safely outside, the flames were already several meters high from the roof of my workshop. I thought everything would go to waste, including my house.”
The fire brigade rushed out with many fire trucks and was quickly on the spot. “I think there were at least twelve cars. They came from all sides and were there within ten minutes. But in the meantime you feel very powerless.”
The house was kept wet continuously so that the fire would not spread from the car company to the house. And that worked, although of course there is also a lot of smoke and water damage in the house. Tommy’s workshop was completely destroyed.
“There were gas bottles and cars in the workshop, that’s why the fire was so fierce.”
Tommy thinks the fire was so fierce because he had a lot of combustible items in his workshop. “There were gas bottles and cars. Everything inside has been lost. Also my tools, papers and license plates. You can’t imagine it being gone.”
Of the two cars that were inside, only a heap of twisted steel remains. “It’s fortunate that those cars are my own and not my customers’. I gave a lot of cars a holiday this week. I can’t imagine that they were still here, then those people wouldn’t have traveled can go.”
