Place Vendome Underground Garage Fire - Paris, France 3/8/12

[peterose313 345]

Date: 3/8/2012

Time: Approx 1640 hrs

Location: Paris, France

Departments:The Paris Fire Brigade

Description: Fire in underground parking garage that often holds numerous rare and exotic cars. The fire has been confirmed as starting in the underground garage on the - 2 level and was started by a Ferrari leaking petrol.

Links: Vendome On Fire: Paris' Famous Ritz Hotel Ablaze , Place Vendome Garage Full of Supercars on Fire in Paris

Writer: peterose313

Update: According to our Paris reporter Alex there is one person light wounded.

Update 2 19:21 CET: The fire started around 16h40 at the -2 parking, as we reported earlier one light wounded has already been treated by the medics. The fire is still going on, around 100 firemen are working on it but it's really hard to get the fire under control because of the heavy smoke and high temperatures inside the garage. As one of our readers already commented below, it was already hot in the garage last year when the Gumball 3000 was there, imagine now.

Update 3: The unconfirmed cause of the fire is a car on -2 that leaked petrol. For safety reasons the Place Vendôme and 400 meter around it has been closed off.

Around 7pm CET, the firemen made a statement that the garage is still burning and that they don't know yet how big the devastation in the Place Vendome garage is. But apparently, quite a lot of cars burned down, very bad news.

Update 4: Based on first estimations from insurance experts GTspirit has spoken dozens of vehicles are likely to be destroyed by a fire of this scale and dozens of others are likely to have suffered smoke and / or water damage. Considering the large number of expensive cars parked in the Place Vendome parking garage and damage to the garage itself the total damage of the fire is likely to be in excess of 5 million Euros.

Update 5 8pm CET: Paris Fire Department says it may take them all night to get the fire completely under control. We fear a majority of the cars parked in level -2 has to be considered a loss. The extreme heat and smoke is likely to have caused damage to vehicles parked on other levels as well.

Update 6 8:50pm CET: Our local reporter says the Paris Fire Department stated the fire has been contained. There is still smoke coming from the Place Vendome but the fire would not spread any further.

Update 7 9:45pm CET: We added a new photo via @JordanPillet to the gallery above. He reports Place Vendome remains locked down by police, fire figthers are on scene and police refuses to answer any questions.

Update 8: Paris Fire Department has decleared that around 9pm the last flames were extinguished in the underground parking garage under Place Vendome. At least 30 vehicles have been destroyed by the fierce fire that started just before 5pm this afternoon. The extreme heat and smoke is likely to have caused damage to many other vehicles parked in the Place Vendome garage. Local authorities have initiated an investigation to determine the causes of the accident.

Update 9: Our local reporter Alex just spoke to a friend who works at the garage. He stated the parking is closed down completely at least until tomorrow. At least 40 cars caught fire and have yet to be evacuated. The authorities are worried the structure of the parking might have been compromised by the fire, so they called the architects of the project to check the structural integrity.

NOTE: Updates were copied from Place Vendome Garage Full of Supercars on Fire in Paris

Edited March 9, 2012 by peterose313