In just one hour, a fire destroyed a 2-storey, 800-m² building housing a distillery containing 50 hl of pure alcohol. The emergency intervention of some forty fire-fighters using major quantities of emulsifier still did not enable saving the production line, the storage of bottles ready for shipping or the distillery offices. A thunderstorm passing 90 minutes earlier would have caused an electrical overvoltage with power outage; even though power was restored when the operator activated the circuit-breaker, a smouldering fire was still created that eventually lead to the full-scale blaze.