Four people died and 23 were seriously injured in the fire which broke out at night in retirement home in the town of Bedburg-Hau in North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the police, the fire started in the room of one of the elderly, who however survived. According to BILD, the man confessed to the rescuers that he was secretly smoking. A police spokesman said it was not possible to save four elderly people, while 23 people were seriously injured – including two staff members of the institution. He pointed out that the building, which was evacuated, is no longer habitable and a new place should be sought. The elderly tenants were temporarily moved to an adjacent indoor gym.

A spokesman for the German Patient Protection Foundation said today that “the number of fires in nursing homes remains at a consistently high level”, noting that there have been 26 such incidents since the beginning of the year. “This makes it obvious that preventive fire protection regulations are not sufficient for this type of facility,” he added, and called for the institutions in question to be required to install a stand-alone fire protection mechanism in each room.