The Horta premetro station is closed on Monday due to smoke, while firefighters are still looking for the cause of the fire, their spokesperson Walter Derieuw said shortly before 2 p.m.
A major rescue system is deployed on site, with numerous firefighters and police officers around the station. A security perimeter is established in the area, which leads to the closure of Chaussée de Waterloo at the Barrière de Saint-Gilles, near Horta station.
“I walked past there was a huge cloud of smoke,” Maxime explains to us after pressing the orange Alert us button.
“Two minutes later I heard a lot of ambulance and police sirens,” he adds.
The Stib is also interrupting the circulation of trams 4 and 10 between Gare du Midi and Berkendael. No details have yet been given on the duration of the interruption.
Emergency services are currently responding to locate the source of the smoke and assess the situation. No information is immediately available on possible victims or the origin of the release.
The situation causes disruptions both for users of the public transport network and for automobile traffic in this busy district of Saint-Gilles.
