Germany’s raucous New Year’s celebrations led to a typically busy night for emergency services overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday.
Police and firefighters across the country reported at least four fatal injuries related to explosions the next morning.
In several cities, emergencies were bombarded with fireworks, a recurring trend in recent years. A Berlin police officer was seriously injured and had to undergo surgery.
The capital’s University Hospital said it was treating eight more people with serious hand injuries and that “the night is still young” shortly after mid-afternoon. He later updated the figure to 15.
Berlin police issued an update early Wednesday, welcoming the implementation of new fireworks-free zones in the city center, but still reporting widespread disorder outside those zones.
“We had to make around 320 arrests, in several cases rescuers and police were shot,” Berlin police spokesman Florian Nath said in a video posted online. Berlin police escorted firefighters into the city for their own safety, a resolution police said had contributed.
“We also have a seriously injured police officer who appears to have been hit by an illegal firework,” Nath said, adding that he underwent emergency surgery overnight.
Cologne police said two police officers were injured by illegal fireworks and that fireworks were fired at police officers and firefighters. In Leipzig, an organization of about fifty other people attacked the emergency services. Similar reports and photographs have emerged in parts of Hamburg and elsewhere.
Fire crews were in paint across the country battling smaller fires: trash cans, houses, cars, garages and other items discovered near sidewalks.
In Neuwied, a small city in western Germany, though, police suspected a firework caused one blaze at a warehouse that grew to a serious size before being reported shortly before 1 a.m.
“At the scene, a fire was discovered in a giant warehouse where, among other things, wood was stored,” the Neuwied/Rhein police said in a statement. Affected citizens were evacuated from nearby homes through emergency facilities and the fire was brought under control. what was said.
“Work to extinguish the fire continues,” police said in an update at around 6 a.m. “The severe heat build-up also caused damage to nearby buildings.” They estimated costs to be in “a medium six-figure range.”
“The cause of this fireplace is also a New Year’s fireplace display. Investigations are continuing,” police said, hours after responding to a similar fireplace in the city center.
Police, medical professionals and firefighters have continuously banned fireworks, or at least some restrictions on the massive New Year’s fireworks amnesty practiced in Germany in recent years. The practice was closed for two years due to COVID-19, but then to restrict the public. meetings.
The German pyrotechnics association, meanwhile, said that the deaths and serious injuries could be traced back to illegal firework usage.
“These harmful DIY paints have nothing to do with legal and controlled New Year’s fire paints” through licensed manipulators, said board member Ingo Schubert.
He argued that serious injury was “all but ruled out” even in cases of improper usage of approved fireworks and said the onus should be on authorities to crack down on illegal pyrotechnics, not those sold in shops.
msh/sms (AFP, AFP)