The thuja and the grassy roof of the shop caught fire from the pyrotechnics in Prague
/VIDEO, PHOTOGALLERY/ During New Year’s Eve, Prague firefighters responded to 55 fires caused by fireworks, 23 of which were extinguished before midnight. They said on Twitter that the professional units were also assisted by members of the volunteer corps in some cases.
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Vehicle fire in the street in the Balkans.
| Photo: Firefighters Prague
The number of incidents caused by carelessness in the use of firecrackers and firecrackers was almost comparable to past celebrations: on the night of the turn of 2021 and 2022, firefighters in Prague counted 57 of them.
As a rule, firefighters were called to burning bushes, plastic containers, waste, but also the remains of pyrotechnics themselves. During one of the interventions at the containers, the intervention unit even got a plate of sandwiches in the car; prepared at home in the traditional way.
Source: Youtube
More extensive damage, which was estimated at 30 thousand crowns, was caused by a thuja fire in Horní Počernice. User Paty Element responded to this information on Twitter: “No, if only the thuja burned, then the damage is zero…” A larger fire also broke out on the grassy roof of the Billa chain store in Modřany, to which the firefighters were called an hour before midnight: it was burning on area 30 square meters. Here, high-altitude technology was also used during extinguishing; however, firefighters managed to deal with the flames within a few minutes.
New Year’s Eve in Prague: A police officer attacked on Wenceslas Square and dozens of windows smashed
Firefighters from the Smíchov station recorded the first hit of the new year in Prague: six minutes after midnight, they went out to a grass fire in Košířy. Then others began to appear one after the other. Even this year, the celebrations were not complete without pyrotechnics flying into unwanted places and directly into people’s dwellings – firefighters went to Vysočanská Street in Prosek to put out things left on the balcony of a block of flats.
However, the biggest fire in the first hours of 2023 in Prague was not related to the use of pyrotechnics. Two hours after midnight, professional and volunteer units converged on Na Balkáně Street in Prague 9, where a small electric car was on fire. When the first unit arrived, the interior of the car was already on fire. Firefighters using breathing techniques managed to deal with the flames with the help of a single stream of water. Although the car itself was extinguished, an inspection showed that its battery remained unstable. Therefore, a special Cobra fire extinguishing and cutting device was also used, which disrupted the battery shell and cooled its internal part. The intervention lasted until seven o’clock, when the battery was checked for the last time using a thermal camera. The fire investigator is investigating the cause of the fire together with the police; the damage caused, according to the first estimate, will be calculated in the order of hundreds of thousands of crowns.
Video, photo: People in the center of Prague celebrated New Year’s Eve with pyrotechnics despite the ban
During the night at the turn of the year, however, the Prague firefighters were not only engaged in extinguishing. Shortly after midnight, climbers were rescuing a couple who had climbed a chimney in Malešice from a height of approximately one hundred meters. After they got the people safely to the ground, they handed them over to the police. Two people also needed help under the Charles Bridge, where they ran aground with their boat.
The Prague rescue service assesses the year-end celebrations as “rather milder” compared to the pre-covid period. During the night services in the center of Prague, i.e. in the special Golem on Wenceslas Square and at the stations on the Old Town Square, paramedics treated 28 participants of the celebration; ten of these patients had to be taken to hospital. Complications associated with drinking alcohol, including falls, were more common; they dealt with only six accidents related to pyrotechnics. The first trip of the Prague rescuers after midnight was also related to the fiery rampage: a 22-year-old man needed treatment for his hand injured by a firecracker. In total, rescuers recorded 81 events connected with celebrations in Prague.