In one day, his entire company was destroyed. Director Tonnie van den Boogaard (66) has tears in his eyes and a lump in his voice when he talks about the damage. 75 percent of his company, specialized in logistics, burned down. “I saw forty years of work pass by. Everything is gone in one go.”
The fire broke out on Thursday night. The fire brigade spent more than 28 hours extinguishing the fire at the Vice Versa distribution center on Kanaalstraat in Oss. According to Van den Boogaard, 250 firefighters and 88 vehicles were deployed at the peak.
It created an hours-long nightmare for the family. Son Koen talks about the disastrous day: “My father and sister called me around six o’clock in the morning. I immediately drove here. The fire brigade was already busy. It seemed to go well, they thought the fire had gone out. But the euphoria turned when the fire flared up again. They tried to drill holes and smash into walls to extinguish it, but around noon it was clear that the building could no longer be saved spend the day just watching helplessly as everything burns.”
Ten freezers and a few cold stores went up in flames, as did thirty thousand pallets. The warehouse contained meat, vegetables and ice cream. Remnants of the meat, such as thousands of frikandels, lie on piles of garbage. Koen is happy that there were no casualties. “Only material damage, but it is your life’s work that you see disappearing.”
Yet the family does not give up. Tonnie had already started working fewer hours and handed the business over to his children. “I worked for about twenty hours. That has now been scaled up to fifty or sixty hours. That feels good, but the motivation is less. But we put our shoulders to the wheel to make something beautiful for the children again.”
It is not often that the fire brigade has so many firefighters fighting the fire. It is even a record according to a spokesperson for the safety region. “It concerns a cold store/cold room with low temperatures of approximately -18 to -20 degrees Celsius. This caused the fire hoses to freeze, rooms to be very slippery and our fire brigade colleagues to be unable to see a thing.”
The large surface area of the building also made this fire complex. “The cold store was full of high warehouse racks that were close together with large quantities of materials. The situation was therefore unsafe for our firefighters and it was not possible to directly extinguish the fire.” According to the fire brigade, the construction of the cold store was specifically designed to keep the cold in and allow little air to enter. “This means that the heat, smoke and combustibles cannot escape easily.”
75 percent of the buildings burned down. All refrigerated and frozen food stored there was burned. But all trucks are unaffected so daily work can continue. “Other cold stores want to help us and have made space available so that we can serve our customers.” The building across the street, which is still intact, will temporarily house an office.
Tonnie is devastated. “But the emotions are slowly decreasing. Also because you are now busy with administrative matters, such as contact with experts and cleaning up the mess. It gives me a drive to rebuild this.”
Nothing is yet known about the cause of the fire. It is clear that lightning or fire near the solar panels is excluded. “It started at the top,” says Koen. “It’s as if we are in a movie. This is completely unreal. But we will overcome this, together with our staff, many of whom have been working here for years.”
The fire brigade will continue to extinguish the fire on Monday. The case is then transferred to the owner and insurance company.
Huge fire destroys business premises, view the images here
Carefully clean up pieces of solar panel, large fire will slowly go out
