Copenhagen fire ‘our Notre Dame moment’
Blaze rips through historic Old Stock Exchange and destroys twirled spire that was part of city’s skyline
A MAJOR fire broke out at Copenhagen’s old stock exchange yesterday morning, collapsing the twirled spire that was once an integral part of the Danish capital’s skyline.
Jakob Vedsted Andersen, a fire service spokesman, said: “The extinguishing work is very difficult.” He said it was still too dangerpus for firefighters to enter parts of the building.
The smoke was visible from as far away as Malmo in Sweden, across the Oresund Strait.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, police said, after blocking off parts of the city centre.
The 17th-century Børsen is one of the city’s oldest buildings, located a stone’s throw from the Danish Folketing Parliament and Christiansborg Royal Palace. It had been under renovation when the fire broke out.
Its destruction, falling on its 400th anniversary, has been compared to the fire that ravaged Paris’s Notre-dame cathedral five years ago while it was also being renovated.
Posting on social media, Troels Lund
Poulsen, the Danish defence minister, wrote: “Horrible pictures from the Bourse. So sad. An iconic building that means a lot to all of us ... Our own Notredame moment.”
The 184ft spire featured four dragons, with crowns representing the ties between Denmark and its close neighbours Sweden and Norway.
Onlookers gasped as it collapsed on to the streets below.
Klavs Lockwood, a local who helped rescue national artefacts from the fire, said: “I saw the tower topple over. It fell like a tree being felled. It was violent.
“This is Notre-dame in Denmark. For us, this is just as big a disaster.”
When the fire broke out at the Borsen, carpenters were still working on the roof and had to be rescued. Scaffolding around the building made it harder for emergency services to tackle the flames, while the copper roof preserved the heat, the Copenhagen fire department said.
Jens Kastvig, a fire safety expert, said workers often covered fire alarms during dusty work to prevent false alarms.
The blaze was still raging yesterday and there was reportedly a loud bang. Denmark’s Berlingske newspaper reported a section must have collapsed.
The Dutch Renaissance-style building no longer houses the stock exchange but serves as headquarters for the Danish Chamber of Commerce.
It hosts a collection of paintings of important Danes dating from the 17th century. One of the paintings rescued was Peder Severin Kroyer’s From
Copenhagen Stock Exchange (1895), a monumental oil-on-canvas group portrait that depicts 50 of the most powerful traders at the time.
The Chamber of Commerce wrote on social media: “We are met by a terrible sight. The Bourse is on fire.”
Video from the scene showed people including Brian Mikkelsen, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, carrying large paintings from the building.
“We are working on saving everything that can be saved,” Morten Langager, the Børsen director, said on social media. Jakob Engel-schmidt, the culture minister, found it “touching” that passers-by were helping emergency workers “save art treasures and iconic images”. He added: “400 years of Danish cultural heritage in flames.”
It is likely to take 24 hours or more to fully extinguish the blaze, fire services said. Jakob Vedsted Andersen, emergency manager at Hovedstadens Beredskab, said: “The fire has been so extensive that large parts of Børsen are burnt out. The fire damage in there is irreparable.”
Furniture, floor separations and everything that could burn had been destroyed, he said, with emergency services working to keep the outer walls and facade intact.
A large proportion of valuables have been saved. Camilla Jul Bastholm, of the National Museum, said: “We have secured several hundred works of art from Børsen. They have been brought to the National Museum’s warehouse with a police escort because of the large amount of value.”
In a message on Instagram, King Frederik, Denmark’s recently-crowned monarch, said that “an important part of our architectural cultural heritage was and continues to be in flames”.
‘I saw the tower topple over. It fell like a tree being felled. It was violent. For us, this is a big disaster’