The fire service is faced with difficult circumstances due to the blaze in the Grunewald.
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| [A Bundeswehr armored vehicle recovered from Grunewald fire] |
There is still a significant amount of work for the fire department in Berlin. There is still a fire burning in Grunewald; it has not been put out. There is no way to know for definite when a fire operation will be able to take place at the police detonation site.
A day after the fire broke out in the Grunewald forest in Berlin, the fire department is still working to put out the flames and is still faced with a lot of challenges to overcome.
Extinguishing operations near the police blast site where the fire broke out is considered to be very dangerous by the fire brigade due to the fact that ammunition is kept there and it has the potential to explode at any moment. According to the spokesperson for the fire department, James Klein, they plan to discuss next steps beginning on Friday at seven in the morning. After then, it will probably be much simpler to forecast how long it will take before there will be more disruptions to the flow of traffic. The source of the fire is still unknown, as is the order in which the explosion and the burning of the object occurred.
It was early on Thursday morning when the fire started. Even before daylight, it was possible to make out the sound of explosions, and the area surrounding the bomb site in Grunewald was engulfed in flames. During the course of the day, the fire in the region of the forest that was bone dry expanded substantially. The use of a camera-equipped and remote-controlled special robot from the Bundeswehr, which was going to be used to inspect the situation at the explosion site, had to be canceled in the evening because of technical difficulties.
A spokesperson for the fire brigade named Klein said early Friday morning that the fire brigade had received assistance from the Bundeswehr and from other federal states in the shape of four armored tracked vehicles. For instance, this entails the provision of a firefighting truck, which opens up more avenues of action for the emergency services.
On Thursday, the fire department drew a limited circle around the explosion site that was about one thousand meters in diameter. Late Thursday afternoon saw the commencement of the first extinguishing operations inside the safety zone.
Thomas Kirstein, an additional spokesperson for the Berlin fire department, said that it was unlikely that the fire would spread beyond the exclusion zone of 1,000 meters. The surrounding regions of woodland had been sprayed with water by task forces in an effort to make it more difficult for the fire to spread.
The fire department reports that residential areas are not under threat from the blaze, since the residential structures that are the closest to the blaze are at least two kilometers away. A significant portion of the area was blocked off. The Avus highway as well as sections of regional, long-distance, and S-Bahn traffic were all impacted due to the incident. It was declared that there will be restrictions in place until at least six in the morning on Friday.
During a rbb special on the massive fire that broke out in southwest Berlin on Thursday evening, fire department spokesperson Thomas Kirstein said that an evaluation of the situation at the blasting site was essential on Friday. According to Kirstein, "During the early hours, the Bundeswehr, together with the Berlin police, will attempt to capture images there so that the explosives expert may carry out an evaluation." It is safe to suppose that the barrier that is preventing traffic from moving on the Avus highway, for instance, may not even be removed during the day.
In the meanwhile, many have began questioning whether or not the explosion site established by the authorities at Grunewald is in the appropriate location. The chief of state for the CDU in Berlin, Kai Wegner, has requested that discussions take place with Brandenburg for a combined explosive site for the two states. According to Wegner's comments in the rbb "Abendschau" on Thursday, the appropriate consequences need to be taken from the fire that occurred in Grunewald on and surrounding the Berlin police blast site. A location for such an explosion does not have a place in a nearby recreational area.
Franziska Giffey, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, made the announcement that she is interested in discussing the site. After visiting Grunewald, the SPD politician, who was in the middle of a vacation at the time, said that "We need to think about how we will deal with this explosive site in the future and whether such a place is the right place in Berlin." The visit to Grunewald forced the politician to cut short her vacation. Giffey made the announcement while speaking with Dietmar Woidke, the prime minister of Brandenburg, on discussions about the possibility for such cooperation in the metropolitan area.