ÅGOTNES (Dagbladet): – The police knocked on the door just before 5.30 pm. “You have four minutes to get out,” was the clear message.
Lars Brockstedt (46) describes the evacuation he and cohabitant Camilla Johansen (41) had to do away with in a sweep from the house in the residential area Maggevarden on Ågotnes on Sotra yesterday afternoon. Hundreds of homes are located inside the fire field. The police knocked on doors and everyone had to move out.
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– By then we had already started collecting things, we understood where this was going. We were interested in getting more gas bottles out, which we use for kitchens, barbecues and utensils. I remember some horror stories about how it can go with gas cylinders on fire, says Brockstedt, who was at work nearby. He discovered on a local Facebook group that it had caught fire in the area. He did not even notice anything while sitting in an office.
Lost everything in the fire: – Did not go up for me
Escaped to motel
Cohabitant Camilla Johansen sat in a home office with the job as a document controller in the rig company Island Drilling.
– I noticed smoke and saw flames, like that approx. at 13.30. Then the water inside the house disappeared, and I looked around to see what was going on. Then I felt the smoke and saw flames in the ground under the house.
– I grew up here. And there was a big fire in the ground here three or four years ago. I never thought it would be as bad as now, she says to Dagbladet.
SUDDENLY the water disappeared, Camilla Johansen points to the tallest house in the background, she and the family had a few minutes to get out. Photo: Øystein Andersen.
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She, her cohabitant and daughter of four years spent the night at a motel right near the house. She took the PC to the cafe at the motel and works there from today, at the same time as she watches if something happens to their house. She says that they managed to bring some clothes in addition to the gas bottles.
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– Started at a turning point
– One son got some pictures too. He spent the night with a friend outside the fire area.
The smell of smoke picked up sharply on Tuesday afternoon as the wind increased sharply. Several helicopters are flying in shuttle traffic with water bombs over the Valderhaug residential area nearby, but no new flames have been discovered around the evacuated house of Camilla and Lars.
AVOID DANGER: Got the gas cylinders with me. Photo: Lars Brockstedt.
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– We have not heard anything about how the fire started, but it started at a turning point in another residential area. The wind turns in many directions in a few hours and there is a lot of dry heather and peat bog during a period, says Brockstedt, who hopes the family can move back home during Tuesday.
