The tragic fire of the hotel in Náplavní arose from a cigarette butt, the security was turned off
According to an expert statement from the field of fire protection, the fire was most likely caused by throwing a cigarette into the courtyard, where the garbage lay and the leaves were inflated. He then spread through the door to the reception area, to the hotel lobby, the hall on the first and second floors. Then the combustion products hit all accommodation areas of the hotel and escape routes.
The reason for easy dissemination and late reaction of all participants was the switch-off of electronic fire alarms. In the event of a fire, the facility controls the evacuation elevator, ventilation of the protected escape route, switching off the air conditioning, switching off the electricity, starting the spare unit and warning the residents.
“As far as we know, there were frequent false alarms that disturbed the guests, so the facility was switched off,” said Jiří Zábrodský, head of the second department of general crime, who dealt with the case.
Two charges were dropped
“Another problem was that the security door, which closes itself in case of danger and fills its edges with foam to prevent the penetration of smoke, was mechanically secured with wedges, as it obstructed the employers in the attic,” he added.
Two days ago, two hotel employees were charged with the crime of general negligence threat. The prosecutor’s office will now prepare a charge, up to ten years in prison if convicted.
Five people died due to flue gas inhalation. Twenty-one-year-old German and a year younger South Korean in front of the rescuers in time. Two women, a 20-year-old German woman and an equally old South Korean woman, later succumbed to injuries in the hospital. In March, the family of one of the foreigners who was in the hotel at the time of the fire wrote on the Facebook of the Prague fire brigade that the man had died two months later as a result of the fire. “Unfortunately, the expert opinions from the Netherlands, which we were waiting for, confirmed that this was indeed the case,” said Jan Daněk, a spokesman for the Prague police.
The fire broke out at the Eurostars David on January 20 this year and is one of the most tragic in the country’s modern history. The damage exceeded twenty million crowns.