World's largest cylindrical aquarium, located in a Berlin hotel, explodes

The aquarium explosion resulted in two injuries, nearly 1,500 dead fish and spilled nearly 264,000 gallons of water.

Imágenes del estallido del Aquadom, en el hotel Radisson Collection de Berlín que estalló la mañana del viernes, 16 de diciembre de 2022. — Archivo / Cordon Press.

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16 de diciembre, 2022

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The AquaDom, the world's largest cylindrical aquarium located in the Radisson Collection Hotel in Berlin, Germany, exploded on Friday morning and destroyed the building's lobby. The accident left two people injured, almost 1,500 fish dead and spilled approximately 264,000 gallons of water. Thousands of shattered glass fragments were scattered all over the first floor of the hotel, and some even reached the sidewalks outside.

The facts are still being investigated, but signs points to cold temperatures and deterioration of the tank as potential causes. The first warning came at 5:45 a.m. local time, when several guests heard a very loud noise resembling an explosion, according to the regional radio and television channel RBB. The rumbling, some witnesses relate, seemed to have come from the column-shaped aquarium that stretched the entire height of the six floors of the Radisson Collection.

Hotel guests evacuated

A few seconds later, the AquaDom burst and hotel's doors and interior windows were blown out. An estimated 100 firefighters and 100 police officers were on the scene to evacuate the roughly 300 guests.

A fire department spokesman told RBB that "the water in this aquarium has almost completely leaked out, both inside the building and onto the street." He also added that the accident came "due to the high pressure of the water in the aquarium, when it burst it took a lot of objects with it, which are now scattered on the street."

The German TV station also obtained statements from an eyewitness to the events. She assured that everything happened very quickly:

I just heard a very loud noise and saw that the big aquarium had broken. Then I looked outside and saw that there was a pile of furniture lying on the street and realized then that the aquarium had burst and things had been dragged out.

It was initially believed that 1,500 fish of about 100 different species died in the accident. However, according to the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, some fish were collected and transferred to other aquariums in the city.