It was a muzzle loader

Shooting range accidentally set on fire with a gun

The firefighting operation only ended in the evening(Bild: BFW Linz)

The provincial shooting range in Ebelsberg has burnt down. What happened? An 80-year-old man fired an old revolver, black powder fell out of the barrel and ignited nitro residue on the ground. The man was thrown to the ground in the incident, but was lucky.

He certainly hadn't intended to make such a "direct hit": An 80-year-old man was practising with a muzzle-loading revolver, as was common in the Wild West, at the Auerhahn provincial shooting range in Linz-Ebelsberg on Tuesday afternoon. The accident happened at around 3.50 p.m.: When the shooter lowered his weapon, residual black powder fell from the barrel onto the floor and ignited nitro powder residue that had accumulated in cracks in the wooden floor, as head marksman Alois Litschmann reports: "We have it all on video. You can see exactly how a small flame first develops and then explodes. Our member was knocked over by the pressure, first lying on the ground and then crawling out of the shooting range."

The large hall of the shooting range burnt out(Bild: FF Ebelsberg)

Quick return
Fortunately, the elderly shooter was not injured, but was checked in hospital due to a serious illness, but returned to the scene of the crime in Linz in the evening.

When the professional fire department arrived, the roof construction of the shooting range was already on fire. The destroyed sheet metal roof structure was removed from the building with a truck-mounted crane after extinguishing, and the remaining embers were extinguished.

Serious incident in 2018
Such explosions are anything but harmless: on February 1, 2018, a fire broke out at the shooting range in Viecht in the municipality of Desselbrunn while two marksmen were shooting a rifle. A 50-year-old from Eberstalzell died and his colleague (62) was seriously injured.

Special floor purchased
"How you do it, you do it wrong," says club chairman Litschmann, struggling with the pitfalls of his hobby: "We have a special anti-static stone floor so that the powder residue can be swept up. We only have a wooden floor where our shooter was standing because of the risk of ricochets."

The investigation is still ongoing, but Litschmann considers the case to be closed. The shooter had done nothing wrong and the damage would be covered by the insurance.