The largest department store "Innovation" is located on Neuve Street - almost in the very center of Brussels. It was a typical May day, almost half past one in the afternoon, when the department store usually has the most visitors. There were 1,200 servants alone. It was at this time that a fire broke out in a department store, which had not been seen in prosperous Belgium for a long time.
As it turned out later, the fire started on the fourth floor in the sporting goods section from the explosion of a butane can. Tents and other tourist equipment caught fire. The flames spread with lightning speed to other floors, and within a few minutes the multi-storey department store turned into a blazing fire. The alarm systems and automatic fire extinguishing systems turned out to be faulty, and, as the store employees later claimed, the alarm did not work.
One of the saleswomen, who worked on the fourth floor, then said: "I saw black smoke that was spreading not from below, but from above." Another saleswoman from the children's department also noticed the smoke and ran to look for the department store's security chief. Not finding him, she told the firefighter she had met. He returned with her and tried to extinguish the fire with a fire extinguisher. But when this could not be done, the firefighter called the city fire department by phone.
Meanwhile, panic began in the department store. Distraught with fear and terror, the people fled in all directions. Finding themselves in the dark, they bumped into counters, knocked each other off their feet, making the confusion and turmoil even more intense. Some, fleeing the flames, were thrown out of the windows directly onto the pavement. Due to the raging flames, the electricity supply was cut off, and as a result, the passenger elevators stopped. Many of them were blocked, and the people in them were burned to death. The fire killed over 320 people, hundreds of the wounded were taken to the hospital.
One woman stood for forty minutes in the window opening on the fourth floor, waiting for the firefighters to reach her. And all this time, which seemed to the customer an eternity, they had to disconnect the wires of the city lighting in order to reach the window. When the woman was finally safely lowered to the ground, a sigh of relief sounded from the crowd below.
Elsewhere, an elderly man with the energy of despair climbed onto the ledge, grabbed hold of a drainpipe, and after five minutes - which also seemed like eternity - slid to the ground. His hands were badly burned and torn apart.
Nev Street was all covered with broken glass, metal canvases were lying on the ground, and on the facade of the department store, even after the disaster, empty shop windows gaped for several days. Residents of the neighborhoods adjacent to the department store were urgently evacuated, as the wind-blown fire could spread to neighboring streets.
The fire chief of the city of Brussels recalled later: “When we arrived, a column of flame was already rising over the department store. Without a moment's hesitation, we engaged in rescue work: we stretched the canvas below, put several ladders. But soon the escape ladders themselves were on fire. The critical moment came at 16.00, when the flames spread to Damier Street and fell like a firestorm on the houses standing on it."
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The fire soon reached the Fischer textile warehouse on Kanon Street. The heat was such that one of the firemen's helmet caught fire. Why is there a helmet! On the sixth floor of a nearby Priba store, fireproof armored doors designed for a temperature of 1050 ° C melted.
All the firefighting forces of Brussels were gathered on the street Neuve. But the access roads to the fire site were so narrow that the fire engines had to maneuver with great difficulty. It was especially difficult to bring large stairs closer and push them forward. Despite all the measures taken, the fire continued to rage with might and main. The dome and roofs of the store collapsed. Beams and shards of glass rained down. The facades of the department store, overlooking Damier Street and Martyr Square, collapsed. The streets of the city adjacent to the department store "Innovation" were crowded with people, never in Brussels there was a fire so terrible and destructive.
A silk factory was already on fire, and a threat loomed over a nearby telephone exchange. Firefighters broke down the doors of burning houses in order to extinguish the flames from the inside, but a strong wind picked up the fire and carried it further. Following the silk factory, a cabinetmaker's workshop flared up, then a nursery and a school.
Mounted on fire escapes, water cannons, like artillery pieces, besieged the burning facades of buildings. But the fire not only did not subside, but on the contrary grew, and additional firefighters had to be called in from the neighboring city of Liege. The joint efforts of the fire brigades of the two cities stopped the advance of fire from the side of Nev Street, but this success did not please them for long. Concern gripped firefighters when they learned that in the basement of the department store "Innovation" there is a tank with fifteen tons of fuel oil. And at any moment it could flare up … Fortunately, a catastrophic explosion was avoided, but the department store itself burned out almost completely. The large Priba store and other buildings were severely damaged.
A few days after the fire, a special commission was created to investigate, in particular, the following question: why such a modern building of the Innovation department store, built firmly and reliably, was unable to withstand the fire element. One of the Brussels newspapers cited, as an example, natural disasters of the Middle Ages, when whole cities and settlements built of wood disappeared from the face of the earth. But it turned out that modern Babylonian towers are vulnerable. The floors of the department store, exposed to high temperatures, could not stand it, and its entire bulk collapsed like a house of cards.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev