The historic Copenhagen Stock Exchange building, in the capital of Denmark, was engulfed in a fire this Tuesday, which broke out around 7:30, and which an hour later caused the collapse of its iconic spire. There are no fatalities, although the damage to the structure is serious. The authorities have closed the area around the property, controlled by dozens of police officers. The Copenhagen Fire Department has confirmed a “massive” deployment of troops in the area. Despite this, the flames are still active and a large column of smoke has been emanating from the building all day. The origin of the fire is unknown at this time.
Early in the morning, when the fire broke out, ten workers from the company that is restoring the building—under construction since 2022—were inside the Stock Exchange, who emerged on their own and unharmed, Danish media reported. “As the structures burn, parts of the building are collapsing,” said Jakob Vedsted Andersen, director of Copenhagen's fire and rescue services, in statements reported by the Danish agency Ritzau. The fire started under the roof, which has copper elements and is difficult to access. This allowed the flames to gain strength and spread to the rest of the building's floors, Andersen explained.
In addition, the scaffolding from the aforementioned works, which surrounds the building, makes extinguishing efforts difficult. The person in charge of the emergency services has admitted that the fire is still out of control and that it affects a large part of the historic 17th century building. “A piece of Danish history is on fire,” the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, said on social media. “The Stock Exchange building is one of the most iconic in Copenhagen,” she lamented. “It is an irreplaceable cultural heritage. “It is painful to see this,” she said, while expressing her gratitude to the emergency services, firefighters, police and military for “bravely fighting the flames.”
Copenhagen police have asked people to avoid driving inside the city. In addition, several wings of Christiansborg Castle, the seat of Parliament, which is located near the burning building, have been evacuated as a precaution, as has the nearby Ministry of Finance.
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The Dutch Renaissance-style building, known in Danish as Borsen, was erected between 1619 and 1640, by order of King Christian IV of Denmark, and is one of the country's main tourist attractions. It was built on Slotsholmen (the castle island), a small island next to the city's port and where the city's first fortress was located. It has not operated as a Stock Exchange since 1974, but serves as the headquarters of the Danish Chamber of Commerce. “We are faced with a terrible spectacle. The stock market is on fire,” this organization lamented on the X network (formerly Twitter). Denmark's Minister of Culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, has also regretted the incident: “400 years of Danish heritage are on fire,” he posted. He has also celebrated the workers and citizens who are “collaborating” to “save artistic treasures and iconic images from the burning building.”
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