Three people were injured in a fire in an apartment complex on Admiraliteitskade in Rotterdam on Monday evening. The twelve floors high building contain mainly student housing, a spokesperson for the local safety office said to NU.nl.
All three injured people were taken to hospital. Two inhaled smoke, the third sustained burns.
The number of people suspected of violence against people with a public duty, like police officers, firefighters and paramedics, increased by nearly 20 percent last year. In 2017 a total of 8,964 people were suspected of verbally or physically attacking an emergency worker, compared to 7,502 the year before, NOS reports.
Emergency services pulled a skater out of the freezing water on Middelland in Hank on Wednesday morning after he fell through the thin ice. The 75-year-old man from Sleeuwijk in Noord-Brabant was rushed to hospital in a critical condition, where he later passed away, police said in a statement.
The man was skating on Gat van Loopgauw, on the edge of nature reserve De Biesbosch, when the accident took place. Passersby saw him in the water and called the emergency services just after 10:30 a.m.
A fire broke out in a home on Bilderdijkstraat in Vlijmen during the early hours of Monday morning. A neighbor noticed the fire around 01:15 a.m. and managed to get the woman living in the burning home outside before she sustained any injuries, Omroep Brabant reports.
The neighbor, a retired firefighter, woke up when the smoke alarms in his home went off. While his wife called the fire department, he went to his neighbor's home to see if he could help. He found a lot of smoke in the first floor of her home. He located the woman in her burning bedroom and helped her outside.
A 29-year-old man from Goudswaard tried to crash his car into a firefighter in Schiedam on Thursday. "Our colleague managed to jump away just in time. This is absurd", a spokesperson for local safety office Veiligheidsregio Rotterdam-Rijmond said to newspaper AD.
A firefighter in the Amsterdam-Amstelland fire department was suspended for making racist comments to a colleague, a spokesperson for the fire department confirmed to the Telegraaf on Sunday.
The suspended firefighter is employed as a commander in the fire department. The spokesperson could give no further information about the firefighter or the investigation against him.
The number of female firefighters, both professional and volunteer, decreased significantly over the past year. This year there are 25 percent less volunteer and 10 percent less professional female firefighters. A new, more intense condition test and changes within the corps are to blame, according to the federation for volunteer firefighters VBV, NOS reports.
An Amsterdam firefighter appeared in court on Friday to fight his suspension for discirminatory behavior. This happened one day after Mayor Eberhard van der Laan discussed a damning report by new fire department commander Leen Schaap about the culture within the city's fire department with the General Affairs committee. Van der Laan promised improvement, AT5 reports.
A 21 year old member of the volunteer fire department in Onderbanken, Limburg has again been arrested on suspicion of involvement in arson.
