After the huge aquarium in a Berlin hotel burst on Friday, the first major chaos was cleared up over the weekend – but many questions remained. “The clean-up work outside has been completed,” said Fabian Hellbusch, spokesman for the building owner Union Investment, on Sunday. “In the underground car park, extraction work is still taking place, although the company has made great progress there.” Surviving fish were distributed to other aquariums.
The 16 meter high Aquadom aquarium with 1,500 fish in the hotel burst early on Friday morning. A loud bang – then a million liters of water poured out of the destroyed acrylic glass cylinder into the hotel and onto the street, among other places. Two people, according to the hotel an employee and a guest, were slightly injured. According to information from Saturday, at least six other shops were damaged in the building complex.
However, the search for the cause continues. According to building owner Union Investment, it was still unclear on Saturday what caused the aquarium to burst. There was no new information on Sunday either. Several specialist companies are active in the investigation. The US company Reynolds Polymer Technology, which was involved in the construction of the burst aquarium, also announced that it would send a team to Berlin to investigate the incident.
The building is not in danger of collapsing, said Hellbusch. Structural investigations continue to take place. Experts should therefore take a closer look at the areas from Monday to assess the damage. A police spokeswoman said: “At the moment there is nothing to suggest that there is anything criminally relevant in the room.”
For the people it was a near-disaster on Friday morning – if the aquarium had burst at a later time in the busy hotel, according to security forces and politicians it could have been worse. But it was also devastating for the animals: almost all the fish in the aquarium are dead.
However, some were lucky. According to the fire brigade, some water collected in the ring, which was actually supposed to stabilize the aquarium. “Three large buckets full” of live fish were rescued from this area, said a fire department spokesman after the accident. Again and again, living fish were found in puddles under debris. According to the building owner, around 630 fish have been rescued from the underground breeding tanks and passed on to the Berlin Tierpark, the zoo, Sealife in the Dom Aquarée and a network of specialist breeders.
“Understandably, there is no timetable for the reopening of the hotel yet,” said the building owner at the weekend. The priority is to record the extent of the damage and to ensure safety during the clean-up work. The fate of the Aquadom is also unclear. “It is not yet possible to say whether the Aquadom will be rebuilt or whether an alternative use is possible.”
