Strong winds, burning Christmas trees and fallen trees kept the fire service busy on Christmas Eve. In total, emergency services attended 515 incidents – including 72 fires – the highest number in years.
Christmas Eve was once again far from quiet for the fire service. Across the country, crews responded to a total of 515 incidents on 24 December. The majority were technical assistance calls: firefighters were required 357 times. Fires were also reported, however. According to the fire and rescue services, 72 fires were recorded – the most at any Christmas Eve in the past five years.
Several house fires were directly linked to Christmas traditions. In Prague, the fire service was called in the morning for a burning Christmas tree. In this case, the owner managed to extinguish the fire before the crew arrived. Later in the afternoon, two more house fires occurred in the capital. Dozens of people were evacuated as a precaution; two people were also injured at one of the scenes. In both cases, careless handling of sparklers was likely the cause. Similar causes were apparently behind two other fires in the Central Bohemia region, which involved a total of seven firefighters. In South Bohemia, crews attended a Christmas tree fire that quickly spread to the roof of a detached house.
One of the largest operations on Christmas Eve involved a fire in a single-storey wooden building in Hostivice, Central Bohemia, which prompted a level II alarm. Eighteen units attended the scene, and heavy equipment from the Czech fire service rescue association was deployed, including a tracked excavator used to remove debris destroyed by the fire.
The most common incidents on Christmas Eve were technical assistance calls caused by the weather, particularly strong winds. The highest number of responses were in the Olomouc region, but Pilsen, Central Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia also saw numerous such incidents. These mostly involved clearing fallen trees or branches from roads. In total, the fire service responded to 357 weather-related technical assistance calls on Christmas Eve.
