BRUSSELS \u2014 At least five people died and several others were seriously injured after a fire broke out on Wednesday morning in an apartment building in the Belgian port city of Antwerp.<\/p>\n
Firefighters were still searching for possible victims inside the building.<\/p>\n
Police say more than 200 people live in the block and the bodies of a number of victims have already been found.<\/p>\n
Local police said the fire had claimed multiple lives, while a number of people were seriously injured and some residents suffered smoke inhalation. It remained unclear how many people were still inside the building and how many had already been evacuated.<\/p>\n
Thick smoke was seen billowing from the eighth floor of the building in the Linkeroever district, after the fire broke out just before 10:00 (08:00 GMT) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Dramatic video showed a man clambering from his balcony through a neighbor’s window to escape the black smoke.<\/p>\n
“It’s a heavy toll here at Linkeroever,” police spokeswoman Kim Bastiaens told Belgian public TV, adding that a number of people had suffered from serious and minor injuries.<\/p>\n
Resident Geert Dewulf told Belgian public TV how thick smoke had stopped him getting out of his flat: “We barricaded ourselves into our flat and waited on the balcony. The fire brigade came to rescue us from the balcony 10 minutes or so later with their ladder.”<\/p>\n
Firefighters said they were going from flat to flat to search for possible victims, explaining that the smoke had spread quickly through the building making it harder to evacuate people.<\/p>\n
Another man said his parents-in-law, one of them ex-mayor of Antwerp Bob Cools, had been successfully evacuated from the building and taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
“We tried our utmost to save the cat but unfortunately in the end we were unable to,” he said.<\/p>\n
Police said it was too early to identify the cause of the fire although witnesses told De Standaard newspaper that work was being carried out on the roof.<\/p>\n
Antwerp fire brigade spokeswoman Marie de Clercq said it was a complex fire and the poor visibility and thick smoke in the building had made it difficult to put out.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Bart De Wever said his thoughts were with the victims and the evacuated residents of the “terrible fire” in Linkeroever.<\/p>\n
The cause of the fire remained unclear. Local police said a forensic team would arrive at the scene later in the day to investigate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS \u2014 At least five people died and several others were seriously injured after a fire broke out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[19,14571,14570],"class_list":["post-25133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-antwerp","tag-antwerp","tag-belgian-city-antwerp","tag-building-fire"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116844697095638241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}