Huge Berlin aquarium bursts, spilling 1,500 fish onto road
A freestanding cylindrical aquarium housing about 1,500 exotic fish burst in Berlin on Friday morning, causing a wave of devastation in and around the tourist attraction, The Guardian reports.
Glass, chairs, tables and other debris were swept out of the DomAquarée complex, which includes a Radisson hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants, as 1m litres of water poured out of the 14-metre-high (46ft) tank shortly before 6am.
Police said two people sustained injuries from falling shards of glass and had to be taken to hospital. None of the animals inside the salt-water aquarium, which contained clownfish, teira batfish and palette surgeonfish, survived.
Berlin’s mayor, Franziska Giffey, visited the scene. “A proper tsunami poured forth over the premises of the hotel and adjacent restaurants,” she said. “If the whole thing had happened an hour later, we would have had to report terrible human damage.”
Emergency services shut an adjacent major road that leads from Alexanderplatz toward the Brandenburg Gate owing to the large volume of water that had flooded out of the building.
