At the end of the day on Tuesday, a fire broke out in a building on Place Van Meyel in Etterbeek. A column of smoke was visible for several hundred meters around.
Yassine lives in the adjoining apartment of the one who is caught in the flames. It was he who gave the alert, “I was leaving my house to return a charger to a neighbor, I smelled a strong smell of smoke, I turned around, and I saw my neighbor’s roof which was on fire. I rushed to all the doors of my building to tell my neighbors to get out. We also rang the doorbell next door, but no one answered.” The adjoining house on the other side, inhabited by a person, was evacuated. Yassine and the inhabitants of his building were able to return to their homes the same evening.
The apartment on fire was occupied by an elderly man, say neighbors. Walter Derieuw, the spokesperson for the fire brigade, and the mayor Vincent De Wolf (MR) announced, around 8:30 p.m., that this man had died in the fire. “The cause is not yet confirmed, but I am told that it may be works”, explains the mayor of the commune. No one was present on the other floors, which were nevertheless inhabited, but the occupants are not domiciled there. The mayor therefore announces that he has set up a reception and accommodation system once they return, in order to house them while the roof, which has been completely destroyed, is rebuilt.
The firefighters descended on the scene with several pumpers. But it is now the Public Prosecutor’s Office which takes over, and which will be responsible in particular for analyzing the stability of the building and the exact cause of this tragic fire.