NYE celebrated across Czechia with increase in number of fires

New Year's Eve, or "Silvester" as it is known in Czech, was celebrated across the country on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning. According to the reports of emergency service workers, the number of callouts this year did not differ significantly from previous years. Paramedics treated 130 patients, which is twice as many as on other days but is a normal situation on New Year's Eve.

However, the number of fires that firefighters had to respond to was 286, an increase of almost a fifth from last year and more even than in the years before the covid-19 pandemic. The biggest numbers of fires were recorded in the Central Bohemian and Moravian-Silesian regions and in Prague. The most common cause of fires was fireworks. A fire in a glassworks in Poděbrady caused almost CZK seven million worth of damage.

In southern Bohemia, the police also had to deal with an incident where a BMW collided with an ostrich shortly after midnight.