Huge aquarium bursts in Berlin, releasing a flood of 1,500 fish

A huge aquarium in Berlin exploded, spilling debris, water and more than a thousand tropical fish outside the AquaDom tourist attraction in the heart of the German capital early Friday morning. Police said parts of the building, which also contains a hotel, cafes and a chocolate shop, were damaged when 264,000 gallons of water spilled from the aquarium shortly before 6 a.m. The Berlin fire service said two people were slightly injured. wounds. The company that owns the AquaDom, Union Investment Real Estate, said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the reasons for the incident were “still unclear.” Mayor Franziska Giffey said the incident had unleashed a “veritable tsunami” of water, but the early morning hour had prevented many more injuries. “Despite all the destruction, we were very lucky,” she said. “We would have had terrible human damage” if the aquarium had exploded even an hour later, once more people were awake and in and around the hotel, she said. The 25 meter high AquaDom was described as the largest cylindrical tank in the world. world and was home to more than a thousand tropical fish before the incident. Among the 80 types of fish it housed were the blue tang and the clownfish, two colorful species known from the popular animated film “Finding Nemo.” “Unfortunately, none of the 1,500 fish could be saved,” Giffey said. she keeps between 400 and 500 smaller fish housed in aquariums below the hotel lobby. Without electricity, their tanks were not getting the oxygen they needed to survive, authorities said. “Now it’s about evacuating them quickly,” Almut Neumann, a city official in charge of environmental affairs for Berlin’s Mitte district, told the German news agency dpa. Several organizations, including the Berlin Zoo, offered to take in the surviving fish. The operator of the Sea Life aquarium said that he was saddened by the incident and that he was trying to get more information about the incident from the owners of the AquaDom. Sea Life’s own aquarium is in the same building and visitors can tour it and the AquaDom with a single ticket. Subzero temperatures that dropped to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight were speculated to have caused a crack in the acrylic glass tank, which then exploded under the weight of the water. Police said there was no evidence that the incident resulted from a malicious act. About 300 guests and employees had to be evacuated from the hotel surrounding the aquarium, police said. Video below: World’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium explodes in Berlin Sandra Weeser, a German lawmaker staying at the hotel, said she was woken by a huge explosion and thought it might have been an earthquake. (glass) everywhere. The furniture, everything has been flooded with water,” she said. “It looks a bit like a war zone.” Police said a Lindt chocolate shop and several restaurants in the same building complex, as well as an underground parking lot next to the hotel, sustained damage. A fire service spokesman said building safety experts were assessing the extent to which the hotel had sustained structural damage. Hours after the incident, trucks began removing debris that had spilled onto the street in front of the hotel. Brightly colored Lindt chocolate wrappers were strewn in front of the building where the chocolate shop had been damaged. A small crowd of tourists and onlookers took photos from behind the police line across the street. The aquarium, which was last modernized in 2020, is a major tourist magnet in Berlin. The 10-minute elevator ride through the tropical tank was one of the highlights of the attraction. Animal rights group PETA tweeted Thursday that the aquarium had become a “death trap” for the fish housed in it. “This man-made tragedy shows that aquariums are not a safe place for fish and other marine life,” they wrote. Iva Yudinski, a tourist from Israel who had stayed at the hotel, said she was shocked by the incident. “Just yesterday we saw it and we were so amazed (by) its beauty,” she said. “Suddenly everything is gone. It’s all a mess, a total mess.”