BRUSSELS – Fire kills around 125 people a year in Belgium and injures a further 900, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

There are 25,000 fires each year in Brussels alone, with 48 percent of these residential, the new statistics show.

But despite making up under half the total number of blazes every year, fires at home were responsible for 80 percent of the 125 deaths in 2004.

This year is already heading towards a tragic record in fire fatalities.

In October alone, a stream of fire tragedies has hit the headlines.

On 25 October, Augustine Regaert, in his seventies, was killed in his home in Leval-Trahegnies.

On 14 October, a fire in an attic on Avenue Pastur in Marcinelle killed four year old twins and their fourteen year old sister.

Another person perished in an apartment on rue de Savoie in Binche and two more people died in a housefire on Avenue Coghen in Uccle.

A 73 year old man died in Erpe-Mere on 23 October from a blaze caused by a short-circuit.

On 18 October a fire destroyed a house in Antoing and the shocked owner was hospitalised.

An old man was asphyxiated in a house on the Combattants a Jumet street and on 26 October, four people were trapped in a blaze on rue de l’Aqueduc.

The most recent person to perish in a fire was killed in a house in Malines on 31 October.

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Belgian news