Germany An aquarium with 1,500 fish and a million liters of seawater explodes in a Berlin hotel
Stepping into the elevator at the Radisson Blu hotel in Berlin was like scuba diving in tropical waters.
Encapsulated in a cylindrical aquarium 16 meters high and 11.5 meters in diameter, the elevator was a 360-degree window onto 1,500 fish of 100 different species swimming among algae and rocks.
With luck, you could even see divers cleaning the bottom or renewing the flora of this miniature sea.
There's nothing left.
The aquarium-elevator, with 1,000 cubic meters of water that would weigh 1,000 tons, burst at dawn on Friday, flooding the ground floor of the hotel and causing extensive material damage.
Two people were slightly injured by glass splinters.
All the fish have died.
The images of what until a few hours ago was one of the most visited attractions in the capital, are devastating.
The pressure of the water overwhelmed the furniture in the hotel hall,
destroyed part of the façade and flooded a large part of the street
.
There is debris and dead fish everywhere.
The surroundings of the Radisson, very close to the Protestant cathedral and Alexander Plazt, were cordoned off by the police and firefighters, who mobilized up to 200 agents to stop traffic and facilitate cleaning tasks.
Civil engineers and the German Federal Agency for Technical Assistance (THW) check whether the building should remain closed.
Swiss Karin Wicki and Sandra Hoffmann were two of the nearly 350 guests staying at the hotel.
"
Everything is destroyed inside. There are dead fish lying around.
All the furniture is destroyed. The windows are destroyed. It has been horrible," they say.
The testimonies of the guests, who have been transferred to other establishments, describe in a similar way the moment of what was never considered an attack by the interior authorities.
"There was a noise similar to an explosion. We tried to contact the hotel reception through the landline, but no one answered. We were very scared. After 8:00 we received the information that we had to leave," says another client.
The blowout occurred between 5:30 and 5:45 a.m., but evacuation of guests did not begin until 9:00 a.m.
But there were no panic scenes and the damage, with the exception of two people injured and the death of all the fish, is material.
Many guests, including Liberal Party (FDP) MP Sandra Weeser, did not find out what was happening on the ground floor of the hotel until several hours later, when the media began to issue their urgency and the fire department decided to proceed with the evacuation.
"I woke up in a deep sleep and at first I thought of something like an earthquake because I felt a brief tremor from the building"
Weeser stated.
The deputy fell asleep again.
She woke up "kind of in a war zone, in the middle of the devastation, with a lot of dead fish and broken pieces."
The shock caused by the bursting of the aquarium and the release of a million liters of water was so great that it actually caused a seismic wave, which was detected by private stations in Rudow and in Lankwitz.
An elderly couple had checked into the hotel at the stroke of midnight. They also believed that the tremor in their bed was an earthquake and remained calm, like Mr. Pohl, one of the few guests who experienced what happened almost directly.
At 6:00 he went out to smoke and "I already saw that everything had collapsed, that the precious aquarium had disappeared."
The police, who had already been deployed, prevented him from returning to the room, where his wife was still sleeping.
"It was a shame. Yesterday we saw two divers cleaning the aquarium. It was very interesting. Thank goodness I took some photos," says this Swedish citizen.
The firefighters received the alarm from an automatic fire detector at the hotel at 5:43 a.m.
The cause could be material fatigue.
"Of course, the investigation into the cause is not yet complete, but the first indications point to material fatigue," said Berlin Senator for the Interior, Iris Spranger.
The gigantic aquarium, containing a million liters of salt water, was destroyed very quickly.
"It was not a small crack through which the water leaked, but rather the entire aquarium burst suddenly," explained a spokesman for the fire department.
Much of the water probably ran through the ground floor doors onto the street and into the drains.
Now it is a matter of assessing the damage and taking the necessary security measures.
For example, it would be necessary to check the statics of the buildings and the roads.
The mayoress of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, who has visited the damaged area, has spoken of luck in the midst of the tragedy:
"If all this had happened an hour later, now we would have to report terrible human damage
. "
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