Zlín high-rise fire extinguished after nearly two weeks: damage could run into hundreds of millions of crowns

Firefighters have put out the blaze at high-rise building No. 34 in the centre of Zlín after nearly two weeks of work, the regional fire service press office announced on Wednesday afternoon. The fire is believed to have started on the 9th floor, where a shoe warehouse was located, before spreading to the upper floors and roof.

The order for nearby residents to keep their windows closed has been lifted, but access to the building's ruins remains prohibited due to the damaged load-bearing structure. The perimeter is fenced off and guarded by a private security firm. "One unit of professional firefighters remains on site, continuing to monitor the burnt-out building and ready to respond immediately if the situation changes," said regional fire service spokeswoman Lucie Javořiková. Drones equipped with thermal cameras are used as needed to monitor the situation without entering hazardous areas.

The cause of the fire, which caused no injuries, is being investigated by forensic experts together with fire service investigators, who say the probe could take several months. Police are examining the case as a possible offence of reckless endangerment, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. The exact amount of the damage has not yet been determined.

The roughly half of the building that survived will have to be demolished — it collapsed in two places. The building is owned by the company Cream, which had its offices there. The shoe warehouse on the ninth floor was leased by the firm Vasky.

Vasky founder Václav Staněk said the warehouse held around 75,000 pairs of shoes, along with clothing and accessories from the Vasky and Botas brands, worth between 150 and 180 million crowns. Alpine Pro, which outfits the Czech Olympic team, lost goods worth more than half a billion crowns, according to owner Václav Hrbek.

The Packeta group, which runs the Zásilkovna delivery service, lost around nine thousand parcels, though the exact financial loss has not been specified. Equator Cycling, a bicycle manufacturer and service company, was also hit — owner Milan Šimek estimates the damage at 5 to 10 million crowns. The fire also affected the sporting goods retailer Sportisimo.

In terms of duration — from the outbreak of the fire to the full extinguishing of all hotspots — the Zlín blaze has become one of the longest in recent memory. By comparison, the fire at the waste incineration plant in Prague's Malešice in 2021, which caused damage worth hundreds of millions of crowns, the fire at industrial facilities in Mladá Boleslav in 2022 with damage of 1.2 billion crowns, and the fire in the Ždánice industrial zone in the Hodonín region in 2023 with damage of 300 million crowns were all extinguished by firefighters in under 24 hours. Fighting the fire at a plastics factory in Žebrák, in the Beroun region, in 2023 — where damage reached 1.8 billion crowns — took two days.

The only fire firefighters have battled longer than the current one in Zlín was the largest forest fire in Czech history, which broke out in Bohemian Switzerland in the summer of 2022 and took nearly three weeks to extinguish. The longest operation of all, according to fire service spokeswoman Klára Ochmanová, was the response to the ammunition depot explosions in Vrbětice in the Zlín region — which lasted almost six years, from October 2014 to October 2020. One of the lengthiest recent operations was the firefighters' response following last year's derailment and fire of a benzene train in Hustopeče nad Bečvou in the Přerov region, which lasted around seven months.

Read also: 9 best cycling routes around Prague: from the Vltava embankments to Karlštejn Castle

Source: ct24.ceskatelevize.cz