Prague’s emergency crews spent Christmas Eve grappling with a series of preventable disasters that left several apartments in ruins and forced scores of residents into the streets. While the city’s holiday statistics recorded 43 incidents in total, the night was defined by a recurring theme: the devastating speed of a fire started by a single sparkler.
The most serious escalation occurred in Lučišníků Street, where crews from the Sokolská and Smíchov stations arrived to find an apartment fully engulfed. What started as a standard sensor alert quickly turned into a high-stakes rescue operation. Firefighters had to pull two people from the burning building before handing them over to paramedics, while 35 other residents were forced to evacuate into the cold night. The cause was later confirmed to be a sparkler on a Christmas tree.
Across the city in Famfulíkova Street, the situation was equally dire. A second-degree alarm—a rare occurrence for a domestic fire—brought in units from three different stations, including chemical specialists. Forty residents managed to flee the building before the trucks arrived, but four others had to be rescued from the upper floors by crews as smoke filled the hallways.
The day’s pattern was established early. On Tuesday morning, a family in Holešovice narrowly avoided a catastrophe when their tree caught fire; they managed to douse the flames themselves just as the first sirens were heard in the distance.
By the end of the shift, the financial toll had climbed into the millions of crowns. The Prague Fire Department’s summary of the night was characteristically blunt, stripped of holiday sentiment: “Be careful around the tree.” For dozens of Prague residents, that warning came a few minutes too late.
Photo credit: Prague Fire
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