Berlin-Wedding: Fire in second-hand bookshop – more than 80 firefighters deployed
A shop on the ground floor of a six-storey residential and commercial building in Wedding caught fire on Tuesday evening. Residents and staff got out on their own; nobody was hurt.
Symbolic image · Photo: Sebaso / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
A fire broke out in an second-hand bookshop in Berlin's Wedding neighbourhood on Tuesday evening. The fire brigade said it was alerted at 7:58 p.m. and sent more than 80 personnel. The shop is on the ground floor of a six-storey building housing flats and businesses.
Thick smoke spread into the two adjacent stairwells, which firefighters cleared using two positive-pressure fans. Because of the intense heat on the first floor, crews initially feared the flames had spread there, but that was not the case. According to a fire brigade spokesperson, residents and staff had left the building before crews arrived, and nobody was injured.
Follow-up extinguishing work continued into the late evening because many heat-damaged items had to be cleared out of the shop. Firefighters also checked several flats. There was initially no information on the cause of the fire.