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Fire and detonations in Berlin's Grunewald.
A major fire broke out on a Berlin police blast site the morning after an unintentional explosion.
Around 15,000 square meters burned uncontrollably on Thursday morning.
– For safety reasons, the fire brigade was initially unable to carry out direct extinguishing work.
Drought and heat made things worse.
Thomas Kirstein, spokesman for the Berlin Fire Department
»
There were explosive burns here and detonations too.
Debris flew through the air, so that the first emergency services were in great danger of death and had to withdraw.
We are now at a distance of 1,000 meters from this blast site.
At the moment there are no active deletion measures.
The safety of our emergency services comes first
.«
The emergency services water the surrounding forest areas in a radius of 1,000 meters to prevent the fire from spreading.
The situation is still "confusing".
Fire brigade, police and army forces are on site, helicopters are supposed to provide a picture of the situation from the air.
There is currently no danger for residential areas, but residents are still called upon to keep windows and doors closed and to switch off ventilation and air conditioning systems to protect themselves from fire gases.
Thomas Kirstein, spokesman for the Berlin Fire Department
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It is not for nothing that the Grunewald explosive site is in the middle of the forest, so there are no living areas that are affected within the 1,000 meter radius.
Luckily there were no injuries, neither among our emergency services.
Although the scenes here this morning were very dramatic.
We urgently warn against entering the Grunewald independently within this 1,000 meter restricted radius
.«
Up to 50 tons of ordnance are said to have been stored on the blast site.
Local public transport is restricted, the Avus city motorway has been closed.
In the meantime, the fire brigade apparently has two water cannons in use and was able to start extinguishing the fire.
How the explosion could have happened is still unclear.