Fire leaves single-family house in Wardenburg uninhabitable, damage put at 350,000 euros

The fire

A fire broke out in a single-family house on Hunoldstraße in Wardenburg-Hundsmühlen, in the Landkreis Oldenburg, in the night to Monday, 9 November. The fire broke out around 0:30, and when the first crews arrived the upper floor was already fully ablaze. Reports say the roof structure was also in flames. The house is now uninhabitable, and police estimate the damage to the building at around 350,000 euros. Police have seized the site and are investigating how the fire started, but the cause remains unclear.

Residents and firefighting

Three residents, a 63-year-old woman and two men aged 37 and 34, had left the building on their own before the crews arrived. The 34-year-old was slightly injured, and the rescue service treated him on site. The reports mention no other injuries. Glowing embers kept flaring up in the roof structure, so crews had to open parts of the roof to reach them. The gas supply complicated the operation, and the energy supplier had to expose the house connection with a mini excavator before it could shut off the gas. The fire service brought the blaze under control and fully extinguished it, and the final work ran into the morning.

Drivers at the scene

Witnesses and firefighters said two drivers tried to get past the emergency vehicles while fire hoses already lay across the road. One of them drove over the curb at higher speed to pass the site. The fire service complains that some drivers ignored the barriers, which hampered the extinguishing work. Matthias Witthöft, press spokesman for the Kreisfeuerwehr Landkreis Oldenburg, described the risk to crews.

“We are already putting ourselves in danger when we fight a fire at the scene, as we are doing here.”

He added that careless passers-by in their cars should not put emergency crews at further risk.