After the fire in Libušín, the police were working with at least three versions

photo: Patriot magazine, https://www.patriotmagazin.cz/

Vsetín - Police officers worked with at least three investigative versions after the fire of the heritage-protected cottage Libušín at Pustevny in the Beskydy Mountains in 2014. They were verifying the cause of its occurrence as a technical defect, negligence, and intent. This was stated today by the investigator of the regional criminal police at the Vsetín District Court, which has been dealing with the case since last September. He appears in the case as a witness.

According to the indictment, the accident was caused by fifty-four-year-old Pavel Pryszcz from Karviná, who neglected the repair of chimneys in 2007. For endangerment of the public due to negligence, he faces two to eight years in prison. The accused refused to testify in court. According to the mentioned policeman, expert opinions from both firefighters and chimney specialists were decisive for the investigation.

Today, a former colleague of Pryszcz also testified in court, who examined Libušín after the fire as a member of the response team of the regional police. "We spent about three days examining it," the man stated. He did not recall whether the doors of the stove, above which the fire allegedly started according to the indictment, were open or closed at the time of his arrival at the burned cottage.

State Attorney Jiří Sachr previously stated that Pryszcz was responsible for the repair of the emergency state of the chimneys. According to the indictment, he assigned the work to two employees who were not professionally qualified, and they lined the chimney in violation of applicable regulations. According to the prosecutor, Pryszcz, as the responsible person, did not detect or eliminate the defects and issued a review report stating that the flue gas paths are without obvious defects. When the cottage was subsequently heated, according to the indictment, the high temperatures of the flue gases damaged the beams between the chimney and the wall in the kitchen, which later led to the fire of the building. The damage caused has been estimated by the state attorney at least 38 million crowns.

In his testimony from the preparatory proceedings, Pryszcz admitted that he indeed issued the review report, but in the document, he stated that the installation was not done, which means that the appliances are not connected. From the photographs after the fire, according to Pryszcz, it appears that the fire probably ignited in the gutter part and not in the chimney. He infers that later inspections and chimney cleaning were not properly carried out. The main hearing continues on Thursday and further in March and April.

The cottage Libušín, built in 1899 according to the design of architect Dušan Jurkovič, burned down in the night of March 3, 2014. The Wallachian Open Air Museum, which manages Libušín, demands compensation for damages exceeding 112 million crowns, while the insurance company claims more than 38 million crowns. After the fire, the museum decided to reconstruct the cottage, which had been a national cultural monument since 1995. The construction of the new Libušín began in the summer of 2017 and will open to the public this year.