One million Euro damage as warehouse burns down

A 2,000-square-metre warehouse of a cooking oil company burnt down in Lower Austria keeping 150 fire fighters on their toes.

Police estimated that the major blaze that started in Deutsch-Wagram in Lower Austria’s Gänserndorf district on Tuesday afternoon caused an estimated damage of one million Euros.

Franz Resperger, spokesman for Lower Austria’s fire fighters stressed that the warehouse contained old cooking oil not fossil oil.

District fire chief Georg Schicker said that the fire had produced a huge column of black smoke which was however dispersed by the wind, facilitating the fire fighting operations that lasted until late at night. He said: “It surely was a very intense event for the fire fighters.”

The smoke column could be seen from so far away that even the Vienna Fire Department received a few calls.

Nobody was injured by the fire and it was brought under control rather quickly after the roof of the warehouse had collapsed extinguishing most of the flames. The blaze was prevented from spreading to adjacent areas like the company’s nearby offices that stayed unharmed thanks to a fire proof wall.

The cause of the fire is yet unknown, investigations have started.