The Hotel 't Silveren Seepaerd fire took place in the night of 28 September 1971 in

Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

Fire

Hotel 't Silveren Seepaerd was a hotel-restaurant on the Stationsplein in Eindhoven. A fire broke out during the night, causing a

flashover A flashover is the near-simultaneous ignition of most of the directly exposed combustible material in an enclosed area. When certain organic materials are heated, they undergo thermal decomposition and release flammable gases. Flashover occurs wh ...

on the ground floor, and swiftly expanded over all four storeys of the hotel. The escape routes in the hotel were poorly lit, and because of the smoke development in the hotel, escape was nearly impossible. The cause of the fire was never found. At approximately 5:30 CET a bus driver discovered a fire in the restaurant of the hotel. The driver alerted the porter, but because there had already been so much smoke development, they did not dare enter the hotel. The fire department arrived a few minutes later to see several guests who lay in the streets after jumping from the hotel windows, and many others visibly trapped on the upper floors. The fire fighters initially focused on saving as many hotel guests as possible before extinguishing the fire. Only at 7:45 in the morning the fire was declared under control; rendering the fire safe took up an entire day.

Victims

Of the 86 people in the hotel, 11 were killed, two as a result of attempting to escape. An additional 19 guests were (severely) injured. The previous day, the Chemie Halle began their stay in the hotel. They had played a match on 15 September against

PSV Eindhoven Philips Sport Vereniging (; ), abbreviated as PSV and internationally known as PSV Eindhoven (), is a Dutch sports club from Eindhoven, Netherlands. It is best known for its professional association football, football department, which has pla ...

in the first round of the

1971–72 UEFA Cup The 1971–72 UEFA Cup was the inaugural season of the UEFA Cup, now known as the UEFA Europa League, which became the third club football competition organised by UEFA. The tournament retained the structure and format of the Inter-Cities Fairs C ...

in Halle. One of the Chemie Halle players, 21-year-old midfielder Wolfgang Hoffmann, died in the fire, while several others were injured. The return match, to be played in

Den Bosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 160,783. It is the capital of ...

, never took place.

Aftermath

The fire in Hotel 't Silveren Seepaerd resulted in strict

fire safety Fire safety is the set of practices intended to reduce destruction caused by fire. Fire safety measures include those that are intended to prevent wikt:ignition, the ignition of an uncontrolled fire and those that are used to limit the spread a ...

regulations for hotels and restaurants. The hotel was never rebuilt. Nowadays there is an apartment complex at the former location of the hotel. After the fire there was no compensation for the victims by the insurance companies. On 28 April 2006 PSV played a

friendly match An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, scrimmage, demonstration, training match, pre-season game, warmup match, or preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sport, sporting event whose prize money and impact on th ...

against Hallescher FC in remembrance of the fire.PSV take off for Halle on Friday morning

References

External links

Hotel 't Silveren Seepaerd fire
at the Zwaailichten disaster website {{hotel fires Building and structure fires in the Netherlands 1971 in the Netherlands 1971 disasters in the Netherlands 1970s fires in Europe 1971 fires Hotel fires in Europe 1971–72 in German football 1971–72 in Dutch football September 1971 in Europe UEFA Europa League controversies and incidents

Fire

Victims

Aftermath

See also

References

External links