Berlin dodged disaster on Friday when a 16 metre-high aquarium shattered without warning just before 6am, washing one million litres of salt water and 1,500 exotic fish into a hotel atrium, cellar and street outside.
Berlin’s ashen-faced mayor Franziska Giffey, inspecting the aftermath of what she called a “veritable tsunami”, admitted that things could have been much worse.
“If this had all happened just one hour later then we would have had a terrible human cost,” she said.
Since 2004 the Aquadom has been a popular tourist attraction for families with children and school groups, allowing guests travel up in a glass elevator through the centre of the aquarium.
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The curved glass tank shattered at 5:45am with such force that it woke 350 guests in the adjacent hotel and was registered by two earthquake monitoring stations.
As they looked out their windows guests could see bits of window frame, glass and bricks from the hotel facade as well as frozen fish everywhere: clownfish, long-fin batfish and doctor fish. Big, small, striped, spiky – all dead.
Later a few dozen fish were found alive in the large aquarium, with others rescued from a separate cellar tank.
Clownfish, long-fin batfish and doctor fish. Big, small, striped, spiky – all dead
“The whole bed shook, I thought it was an earthquake, you could see the whole aquarium falling apart,” said Karin Wicki, visiting from Switzerland. Her friend Sandra Hoffmann saw “everything destroyed in the interior, dead fish and destroyed furniture, shards of glass everywhere”.
“At first we heard a big bang, I though lightning had struck the building,” she added.
The force of water was so great it carried heavy terracotta flower pots, standing outside the hotel entrance, right across the six-lane street outside.
Two people were treated for cuts and all guests were evacuated two hours after the incident as safety tests commenced on the hotel complex and its foundations.
“First indications point towards material fatigue,” said Iris Spranger, Berlin’s city-state interior minister.
Firemen at the scene estimated that the aquarium’s million litres of salt water would weigh 1,000 tons, placing huge pressure on the specially-constructed acrylic glass tank, with panes up to 22cm thick.
Two years ago the entire complex was renovated by its owners, the Union Investment fund. A spokesman said “we are still trying to find out how such a terrible situation could happen, the main thing is that all guests could leave the hotel”.
Visitors could buy tickets to ride through the interior of the aquarium -16m high and 11.5m in diameter – in a lift, watching some 1,500 fish from more than 100 different species.
The Aquadom claimed to be the “largest, cylindrical, free-standing aquarium in the world” but not all former visitors were upset at its end.
“It’s a blessing no one was seriously injured but it was just an expensive tourist trap,” said local woman Gabi Garin. “Inside the lift all you could see were the surrounding hotel windows, you had to squint to see any fish at all.”
As remaining debris was cleared on Friday evening from in front of the hotel, adjacent to Berlin cathedral, the pavements glinted white from ice and salt and fire men predicted “major demolition work” ahead.
