Three and a half years after the fire of the cathedral in Gorzów, the PiS councilor reports on fire protection – Society

The cathedral tower fired in July 2017, during the Gorzów Days celebrated in the city. Several dozen fire brigades fought the fire, which broke out at the time when the church was holding mass. Heavy equipment, including enormous fire lifts, was required to put out the fire.

In October 2017, the prosecutor’s office informed that the cause of the fire was a short-circuit in the electrical system. The fire will appear on the fifth level of the tower, above the bells, and then will spread to the upper floors. The prince was accused of the fire Zbigniew S. and Zbigniew K. – former and current parish priest. According to the prosecutor’s office, they were responsible formuch had been neglected in the cathedral. There was no inspection of the electrical installation in the temple and the fire notification system is not working. Procedures related to evacuation have not been developed either.

Fr. Zbigniew S., a former parish priest, pleaded guilty and voluntarily submit to the punishment. In August 2019, the court sentenced him to a year in prison, suspended for two years and seven thousand. gold fine. The appeal of Fr. Zbigniew K., after he heard the same suspended sentence as his predecessor in September last year in the first instance and twice as many fines.

– If the defendant in the trial after the cathedral fire is its parish priest, then he should not sit alone on the defendants’ court, Marek Surmacz said in an interview with Gazet Lubusk, informing about the filing of a notification in the prosecutor’s office about the suspicion of committing a crime due to the failure of the State Guard to properly proceed. Poarn, including the city commander of the PSP and the Lubuskie voivodship commander of the PSP in 2007-2017.

It follows from the ongoing proceedings that the State Fire Service had full information on the state of fire protection in the building of the Gorzów Cathedral, including failure to comply with the provincial commander’s decision regarding fire protection in the cathedral tower. In connection with the above, in my opinion, there has been a number of negligence made by the State Fire Service, which resulted in the danger to the health and life of many people for 10 years – wrote Surmacz in the notification.

According to the PiS voivodship councilor, in March 2006 the voivodship commander would introduce the obligation to provide specific fire protection for the cathedral tower, and during the 2007 inspection, it turned out that some of the foreseen safeguards were not introduced. In addition, in 2008, the fire department received information that the fire protection system for monitoring and sending an alarm signal to the fire department had been dismantled. And it was also not supposed to react to it – writes Gazeta Lubuska.

Despite the information available, the State Fire Service did not take any actions to prevent a possible threat to health and life. The guard, not reacting to the identified state of danger, did not follow the appropriate procedures in this regard. According to the expert opinion, the city commander should issue a decision ordering the removal of irregularities or even suspend the use of the facility, which, however, was not achieved. Currently, after the fire of the cathedral tower in Gorzów, the number of inspections of sacred buildings carried out by the State Fire Service in terms of fire protection and imposed penalties has increased immeasurably, which confirms that the State Fire Service had earlier the ability to counteract threats to health and life – the deputy minister of internal affairs wrote in the notification in the years 2006-2007.

– The prosecutor’s office, if it did not see it, it is blind – Marek Surmacz added in an interview with Gazet Lubusk.