Six Dead, Eight Injured in Restaurant Fire in Most

Six people died when a propane-butane cylinder exploded in a restaurant in the northwest Czech city of Most, setting the building on fire, emergency services said on Sunday.

“The fire spread extremely fast after a gas heater was probably knocked over,” the local fire service posted on X.

Eight people were injured in the fiery blast that occurred late on Saturday evening, and 30 people were evacuated from the restaurant and surrounding buildings, the Czech fire rescue service said on X social media platform.

The fire brigade said it had rescued one seriously injured restaurant guest who had been trapped in a bathroom.

Czech Radio reported around 20 guests were in the restaurant at the time of the explosion. It started at 11.17 pm on Saturday and was under control by midnight, the fire service said.

“Despite all efforts… the fire had tragic consequences for six people,” it said.

Eight others were injured, six of them seriously. They were taken to hospitals in Prague, Most and the regional capital of Usti nad Labem.

“When the firefighters arrived at the scene, the building was already fully engulfed in flames. The intervention commander immediately began extinguishing the fire and dispatched a team of firefighters with a high-pressure hose to rescue a guest trapped in the restroom. The seriously injured guest was successfully rescued from the burning building,” firefighters’ spokeswoman Lucie Pipiš said in a press release.

The firefighters managed to get the fire under control shortly after 01:00, one member of the volunteer unit was injured during the intervention.

Rescuers deployed ten crews to the scene, supported by the air rescue service from Pilsen.

“The air rescue team assisted in transporting patients to the Královské Vinohrady Hospital in Prague. We treated a total of eight patients. Five were transported to Prague, two to the hospital in Most, and one to the trauma center in Ústí nad Labem. The injuries are severe,” Petr Bureš, regional director of the emergency service in Ústí nad Labem, told reporters.

This is the sixth most tragic fire in Czechia since 1990. The deadliest occurred in August 2020, when an arson attack on an apartment in Bohumín claimed 11 lives.