“Human Tragedy” – Eight killed in container fire in Brno

“There was no one on site that we could have helped,” says a spokeswoman for the rescue services. The police assume that the dead are homeless people who had taken shelter in the dilapidated containers. According to initial findings, there were two women and six men. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala sent his condolences to the families and loved ones of the dead. The opposition called for more help for people without a roof over their heads. The second largest Czech city is located about 200 kilometers southeast of Prague.

“This is a huge human tragedy that cannot leave anyone indifferent,” Brno Mayor Marketa Vankova wrote on Twitter. Firefighters battled the fire all night. They dismantled the construction of twelve living containers put together to find hidden nests of cinders. The fire was finally extinguished in the early hours of the morning.

arson?
The exact identities of the dead have yet to be clarified. According to local media reports, the containers sat unused for years on a site not far from a train station. They were partly overgrown with tarpaulins and weeds. The cause of the fire is not yet clear, but arson cannot be ruled out. As late as mid-April, the same decommissioned locomotive had caught fire twice in succession at the nearby train station. Several wagons also went up in flames.

In October 2010 there was a similar accident in Prague, when nine homeless people died in a nighttime fire in a railway building that was due to be demolished. A 40-year-old man, who himself died in the fire, caused the fire through negligence.