An impressive sight. A “very strong detonation” surprised around 5:45 in the morning this Friday the approximately 350 people present in the hotel and the shopping center of the Radisson Blu hotel on Karl-Liebknech street in Berlin, explained the local police.
The reason: the explosion of a 1000m3 capacity cylindrical aquarium installed in the lobby of this hotel in the center of the German capital. About 100 firefighters and police officers were dispatched to the scene. Parts of the hotel’s facade were smashed in the street.
“Aquarium is damaged and leaking,” firefighters said on Twitter.
“Great Maritime Damage”
The detonation woke up hotel guests in the early hours of the morning and the sight of desolation was widely discussed on social media.
“What the hell is this? My hotel aquarium just blew up in the middle of the night. What’s going on?” one customer wrote on Twitter, filming the remains of the structure in the building’s lobby.
The tube is featured by the Reuters news agency as the world’s largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium.
“In addition to the enormous maritime damage (…), two people were injured by glass fragments,” the city police explained on Twitter. For their part, Berlin firefighters said rescuers had not yet been able to access the ground floor of the building because of the debris. Search dogs were dispatched to the scene to rescue the victims of the disaster.
The reasons for the building explosion are still unknown. The aquarium was modernized in 2020 and a transparent-walled elevator was built inside for visitors. Rescue did not specify whether any of the aquarium’s 1,500 tropical fish had been saved.
Hotel guests were asked to pack their bags and leave the property. Buses have been rented to pick them up and accompany them to other establishments.
The Karl-Liebknech street where the hotel is located in the Mitte district, and which leads to Alexanderplatz and the Brandenburg Gate, has been closed to traffic. “There is an extremely large amount of water on the road,” the city’s public transport said. The hotel also includes a complex of shops and restaurants, as well as a museum.
Source: BFM TV
