Over fifty fires, eighty injuries, five hundred calls to 158. That’s the account of New Year’s Eve celebrations in Prague | Company | News | Prague Gossip
While most of Prague’s residents welcomed the arrival of the new year or slept, firefighters, police officers and rescuers were busy. Firefighters battled fires caused by fireworks, police dealt with their illegal use, and paramedics dealt with injuries caused by overly wild celebrations.
Line 158 was busy, people called there a total of five hundred times from six in the evening to six in the morning. “The biggest announcement was registered by our operations center shortly after midnight. Between 00:00 and 04:00 hours, 291 calls were received on line 158 and 214 events were registered,” a spokeswoman said on the police website Violeta Sirištová. The police officers most often had to calm riots, the use of pyrotechnics in prohibited places and domestic disputes.
In the city center, the police arrested ten people on suspicion of misdemeanors and one person on suspicion of committing a crime against an official.
A police officer who was attacked by a man on Wenceslas Square was taken to the hospital with a head injury. Rescuers treated four people there, firefighters in the capital went to almost two dozen fires caused by pyrotechnics.
The medical rescue service of the capital had two stations in the center, a special Golem car was prepared on Wenceslas Square, and ambulances on Old Town Square. They treated 28 people at both places, ten of whom had to be taken to hospital. “For the entire service, we dealt with only 6 accidents related to pyrotechnics at night. In connection with the celebrations, there were a total of 81 events during the whole period,” informed on Twitter the spokesperson of the Prague rescuers Jana Poštová. Nevertheless, the first trip this year was to a 22-year-old man whose hand was injured by a firecracker.
“Although we certainly weren’t bored, compared to previous years, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, it was more of a mild year-end celebration,” Poštová added.
“During the New Year’s Eve and New Year’s celebrations, we intervened in 25 fires in Prague until midnight, in the first two hours of the year there were another 27 fires,” said a spokesman for the Prague fire department in a press release Martin Kavka. The remains of pyrotechnics, bushes, waste and plastic containers were burning.
The Smích unit was the first to intervene this year, which had to deal with a grass fire in Košířy.
In order for the New Year celebrations to take place as peacefully as possible, extraordinary security and traffic measures will be in place in the center of the capital. Hundreds of policemen will monitor public order, parking bans and entry bans will be introduced in some streets…
“Damage of 30,000 crowns was caused by a thuja fire in Horní Počernice, another larger fire was extinguished by firefighters an hour before midnight on the grassy roof of the Billa store, where an area of 10 x 15 meters was burning. The fire was extinguished with the help of a water stream and high-altitude equipment in a few minutes.” Kavka described.
We’re putting out a fireworks container fire…and sandwiches land in our car…so thanks ♥️ pic.twitter.com/Qtsk4ub6uv
— Firefighters Prague ???? (@HasiciPraha) January 1, 2023
In Prosek, they had to extinguish things left on the balcony, after midnight they rescued two people who had climbed a chimney in Malešice from a height of one hundred meters, or people stuck with a boat on the shallows under the Charles Bridge.
“Last year, we responded to 57 fires. So this year there is a similar number of fires caused by careless use of fireworks,” Kavka added.