Copenhagen, Denmark
Reuters
Large parts of the outer walls of Denmark’s landmark 400-year-old stock exchange building collapsed on Thursday afternoon, two days after a fire ripped through the historic structure.
There was a loud bang as the brickwork came down and a cloud of ash enveloped the building.
“The thing we feared has happened,” Copenhagen fire department chief Jakob Vedsted Andersen told reporters.
View from the tower of the Parliament as emergency management is still working on the fire at Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange, the Boersen, in Denmark, on 17th April, 2024. PICTURE: Ritzau Scanpix/Liselotte Sabroe via Reuters/File photo
The outer wall in the half of the building that burned on Tuesday collapsed entirely. Parts of the top of the wall around the grand entrance to the Bourse also crumbled to the ground.
“Around 40 to 50 per cent of the facade in the half of the building that caught fire has collapsed,” Copenhagen fire department incident manager Tim Ole Simonsen told reporters.
There were no injuries, the fire department said.
Tuesday’s blaze toppled the spire of Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange and collapsed a large part of the roof, in scenes reminiscent of the fire that engulfed the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019.
Simonsen said the walls had been exposed to huge physical stress over the past few days, as their supports burned away, they were heated to incredible temperatures then cooled again, and exposed to water.
Firefighters had worked through a second night to quell flames in the basement and smoke was still rising on Thursday as attention began turning to the building’s restoration.
The Danish Chamber of Commerce, which owns the building and uses it for its headquarters, has vowed to rebuild the exchange which originally opened as a commodities trading venue in the 17th century.
Copenhagen’s mayor, Sophie Haestorp Andersen, said she would travel to Paris next month to learn about Notre-Dame’s restoration.
Police have said it could take months to determine the cause of the fire. No one was hurt in the blaze.
Anders Ellegaard of Denmark’s national forensic centre told TV2 that experts would help determine whether police could pursue a criminal case.
A firefighter works on putting out the still smouldering blaze at the Boersen, Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange, Copenhagen, Denmark, on 18th April, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Tom Little
Meanwhile, the National Museum of Denmark said on Thursday that art conservators are assessing the damage to centuries-old paintings recovered from the blaze.
As the blaze ripped through the landmark on Tuesday, passersby jumped off their bicycles to help firefighters, conservators and soldiers retrieve valuable paintings.
“It had to be fast,” Nina Wajman, a curator at the National Museum of Denmark, told Reuters.
Conservators retrieved paintings from the half of the building that had not caught fire, while firefighters in smoke-helmets and soldiers of the Royal Life Guards recovered paintings from the part that was ablaze, hastily loading them on to trucks.
“They might not have done it in the way an art expert would, but that’s minor, I think,” said Wajman.
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She entered the building to recover a portrait in oil of Christian IV, Denmark’s 17th-century king who oversaw the construction of the building, which was originally built for trading in commodities.
“I wasn’t sure that it had been rescued, so I went in to look for it and it was still there,” Wajman said.
Some paintings were severely damaged by water or fire or because they were hastily torn off the walls.
Conservators are still inspecting the paintings, which were brought to a depot of the National Museum, and are trying to get an overview of the damage and what is missing.
“We had great focus on the valuables inside the building. But the problem was that I needed all my firefighters to contain the fire as long as we could,” Jakob Vedsted Andersen, head of the fire department in greater Copenhagen, told Reuters.
“So we had to ask people for help to bring out the paintings and the sculptures,” he said.
Emergency management workers work in the preserved part of the Old Stock Exchange building, in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 17th April, 2024. Ritzau Scanpix/Ida Marie Odgaard via Reuters
Employees at the nearby Danish Chamber of Commerce, including its CEO, helped to carry paintings as big as three metres wide into a section of the nearby Christiansborg palace.
Klavs Lockwood, a local, was at the site early on Tuesday.
“These paintings were very big and heavy, so I quickly offered my help,” he said.
He said the painting he helped carry had been torn in several places.
“You could see it was taken off the wall in a hurry.”
– With reporting by Copenhagen newsroom
