Venlo man tries to demolish house over beeping smoke detector

A beeping smoke detector drove a man in Venlo to the point of trying to demolish a building on Monday evening. The man works for the contractor responsible for demolishing the building in question, but the police still stopped him.

At around 10:30 p.m., the police received a report that a man had climbed into an excavator and was demolishing the building on Cranveldstraat, the Venlo police said on Facebook. At the scene, officers found that a beeping smoke detector had caused hours of irritation for the people in the area around the construction site.

The “smartly dressed” man in the crane turned out to work for the contractor, but he had climbed into the excavator of his own accord in desperation after he could not find another way to shut up the smoke detector.

The officers said they understood that the beeping was driving locals nuts and that “the man had only good intentions,” but they still asked him to stop the late-night demolition work.

The smoke detector kept beeping in the rubble. The police wished the neighbors strength for getting through the night.