The second fire would have been preventable

There were two fires in the Hammergut residential  complex in Cham – one at the end of May and one in mid-June. The public prosecution has now found two employees of a construction company– one of whom was still an apprentice - guilty regarding the second fire.

Cutting off one screw after another - more than 100 of them. This task was given to two employees of a Cham company, because there had been a fire at the Hammergut residential complex in Cham two weeks earlier, destroying the top floor of the apartment building. The damaged roof had been covered with a plastic tarpaulin. On the day of the second fire, the two men had the task of dismantling the damaged facade of the building, according to the two criminal charges of the Zug Prosecutor's Office.

After removing the outer part of the facade, the two had to cut off the screws, which were immediately below the damaged roof, flush to the concrete wall. They set to work with a "powerful" cutting disc, as stated in the penalty order. The screws were three and ten millimetres thick, which is why they needed six and twelve seconds respectively for each of the screw, "with sparks flying about". "The two workers tried to direct the grinding sparks, which were jumping at least half a metre, downwards," writes the prosecutor's office. But they didn’t do this sufficiently. Again and again, sparks landed on the roof, which was covered with the plastic tarpaulin.

Two large holes with a diameter of about 20 centimetres (about 8 inches) suddenly appeared in the plastic cover. The two employees saw the burn holes and also the smoke rising from one of the skylights. The smoke came from one of the holes in the tarpaulin – which the workers themselves suspected, writes the prosecutor's office. The two then cut open the plastic cover and poured water into it "until it stopped smoking after a few minutes." But they then kept the incident to themselves. Neither their employer nor the fire brigade were informed of the incident. The Public Prosecutor's Office notes that "it is a general experience in life that an unobserved fire can spread uncontrollably".

The extinguishing work after the second fire.
Photo: PD/Zug Police

The gust of wind that additionally fanned the fire should also have been expected. In addition, according to the penalty order, Suva regulations state that the plastic tarpaulin should have been protected by a non-combustible cover. "They had to expect that the sparks being thrown out could lead to a blaze, because they’d noticed embers everywhere on the wooden beams of the scaffolding during the work." They had tried to extinguish these with water from their drinking water bottles.

"The fire could have been avoided with responsible action," concluded the prosecutor's office, and the damage caused by this second fire amounted to about CHF 120,000. The prosecution found both employees - one of whom was in the third year of his apprenticeship on that day - guilty of negligently causing a fire. They will have to pay fines and have been sentenced to pay a financial penalty, although this has been deferred with a probationary period of two years.