On the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Radisson on Berlin's Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, the traces of the devastation that happened to the capital in the morning can still be seen.

Broken furniture parts, doors;

Tables, boxes and splinters lie there.

The road has long since been cleared of rubble, the area has been cordoned off over a large area, and a hundred firefighters and just as many police officers are on duty.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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It was 5:43 a.m., according to fire department spokesman Adrian Wentzel, when an emergency call was received from the hotel.

At that point, something had happened inside the building that probably no one had thought possible.

The large aquarium in the middle of the hotel complex, called AquaDom in Sealife, suddenly burst.

Fish washed up on the bottom

A million liters of salt water poured out of the 16 meter high cylindrical glass column in one fell swoop.

At the same time, the 1,500 tropical fish that lived there in a real coral reef were washed to the bottom.

The blast of the water, which weighed a thousand tons, was so great that the ground floor of the hotel, where the lobby was located, was reduced to rubble.

The masses of water shot out of the main entrance onto the street, tables, chairs, mirror covers and fish were washed onto the road and thrown across the street onto the sidewalk opposite.

A large part of the water flowed into the sewage system, but also into the adjacent underground car park.

The hotel is only a few meters away from the Berlin Cathedral, the buildings are only separated by the Spree Canal.

Two people slightly injured

The rescue workers of the fire brigade first took care of whether people in the hotel had been injured.

However, the rubble on the ground floor was so dense that they also used rescue dogs to make sure no one was buried there.

But the catastrophe ended lightly.

Emergency doctors examined 30 people, only two had to be taken to the hospital with minor injuries from glass splinters.

The early time probably prevented more people from being injured, because between five and six in the morning there were probably no or only a few people on the ground floor and in the lobby.

The hotel's 350 guests were asked to leave the building, which had no electricity in the morning.

They were first taken care of in heat buses and then housed in adjacent hotels.

It is still unclear why the aquarium, which opened at the end of 2003, now burst.

A local police spokesman told the FAZ that fault on the part of third parties is currently excluded.

There is nothing to indicate that the aquarium burst as a result of an attack.

A structural engineer from the Federal Agency for Technical Relief examined the condition of the building in the morning.

The fire brigade discovered cracks in the walls and ceiling there, but it was initially unclear whether they had existed before the aquarium burst or were a result of it.

It was also to be examined whether the water, which had also spread to the basements, had penetrated the false ceilings.

If necessary, the spokesman for the fire brigade said, the technical relief organization is ready to support the building.

A possible cause is material fatigue.

The first signs pointed to this, said Berlin Senator for the Interior Iris Spranger (SPD) of the German Press Agency.

The fish have died

According to the fire department spokesman, the 1,500 fish could no longer be saved.

However, there are other aquariums that are probably not directly affected, said Markus Kamrad, State Secretary for Central Affairs and Consumer Protection in the Berlin Senate's environmental administration, the FAZ.

He had come to the hotel together with city councilor Almut Neumann (both Greens) from the Mitte district to find out whether these fish could be saved.

These are smaller fish that are kept in aquariums in the hotel's basement, Kamrad said.

One problem is that there is currently no electricity in the hotel that is needed to operate the aquariums.

Therefore, the power supply has to be restored or the fish have to be moved to other aquariums.

The Berlin Zoo, which has a large aquarium house,

The AquaDom in Sealife, according to the operator "the largest, cylindrical free-standing aquarium in the world", was a tourist attraction in Berlin for 18 years.

Inside the acrylic glass container, visitors could take an elevator and admire the tropical sea world.

Overall, the construction was 25 meters high, the glass column had a diameter of 11.5 meters.

Thousands of marine animals lived in the aquarium, including many species of rays, sharks, seahorses, octopuses and tropical fish from 100 species.