It was a heavy night for local residents of the burned-down thrift store Rataplan on the Postjesweg. The fire was difficult to extinguish, so the fire kept emergency services and the neighborhood busy all night.
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The fire had to evacuate dozens of homes. Hundred local residents had to be housed in a hotel. After the fire was extinguished, five homes were declared uninhabitable.
‘The flames went through the roof’, says a neighbor. “The fire almost hit those trees,” she says, pointing in the direction of a row of trees twenty yards away.
“It was very scary,” says another resident. “The fire was very close and we were worried the fire would spread to our house.”
Deployment of emergency services
However, the residents were quickly evacuated, they say. ‘I was taken from my house by my neighbor and while we were walking over the railing, a car exploded,’ says one of them. ‘Buses were ready to receive us,’ says a second resident. “Then we were taken to hotels close by.”
The fire was picked up at Grip 1 around 02.00. At that time, many emergency services were deployed and a command post was set up.
It is not the first time that thrift store Rataplan is hit by a major fire. In 2017, the then building on Generatorweg in Sloterdijk also went up in flames.
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