2 days after the catastrophe, emergency services and volunteers speak up on their challenges.
By Diego Leong and Benedicte Højsgaard Christiansen
The financial building of Copenhagen, Børsen, burst into flames on Tuesday morning the 16th of April. This happened during the renovation process, that was to be finished in the fall this year for the buildings 400-anniversary. Since the fire the Capital’s Emergency Response has been working around the clock to put it out and minimize damage.
Wild orange flames were licking up all parts of the building, causing the iconic spire to fall a few hours after the fire broke out.
Morten Nielsen is the team leader of the squad from the Danish Home Guard that volunteers at Børsen, and his week drastically changed when the fire broke out.
“I got the call at 8:04am saying that now we needed to find people, and help the police get in.”
He describes what has happened to Børsen as a tragedy and that is why so many people are volunteering to help.
The Capital’s Emergency Response Team told Danish news channel TV2 while attempting to put out the main fire, they kept finding hidden pockets of smaller fires that would flare up after being uncovered. When the emergency response team tried to cut away parts of the scaffolding to get better access, one of the outer walls collapsed on Thursday, April 18.
According to TV2, The response team is continuing to snuff out remaining hidden hot spots and taking precautions to avoid collapsing the remaining fragile outer walls.