Berlin aquarium explosion caused ground to shake like an earthquake

The explosion of a gigantic aquarium in a hotel in central Berlin last Friday (16) caused seismic tremors equivalent to those of a magnitude 1.2 earthquake, said the website Erdbeben News, which maps such phenomena.

A post by the platform on social networks shows the records of two seismographs, located 8 and 14 kilometers from the Radisson Blu hotel, scene of the incident, at the time the aquarium broke. Both show a peak in records at 5:43 am local German time, exactly the moment when a loud bang woke up hotel guests and nearby neighbors.

At the head of the site, geophysicist Jens Skapski said that the tremors were caused by the fact that the nearly 1,000 tons of water from the aquarium were released from a great distance above the ground —the structure measured almost 16 meters in height, and was considered one of the largest independent cylinders in the world.

The perception matches that of people who were close to the hotel at the time of the incident. Marielle Tierney, 46, told Sheet who at the time thought that a bomb had fallen near his apartment, next door to the hotel. The American, who works as a volunteer receiving Ukrainian refugees at the central train station in Berlin, compared the damage caused by the explosion to that of a tsunami.

Two people were injured by flying glass from the aquarium, including a Radisson Blu employee. About 350 hotel guests evacuated at the request of emergency teams, and the property ceased activities indefinitely.

Called AquaDom, the aquarium also became the target of criticism from environmental activists, who organized a vigil for the approximately 1,500 exotic fish that inhabited the place in the early afternoon of Saturday (17). About ten demonstrators lined up on the sidewalk in front of the Radisson Blu —located near other sights such as the Berlin Cathedral, Alexanderplatz and the Brandenburg Gate— with signs that read: “Fish are friends, not decoration” and ” Rest in peace butterfly fish family.” Participants even placed lighted candles on the sidewalk.

Although the city had at first claimed that none of the animals survived the explosion, the municipal fire team claimed to have managed to save the equivalent of three buckets full of fish that had resisted in puddles scattered around the site.

Furthermore, local newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that around 630 marine animals were rescued from breeding tanks located under the hotel lobby. Their survival was not certain, as the explosion knocked out the building’s power, and the lack of electricity cut off the oxygen they needed.

According to DW, the freshwater species were taken to the Belim Zoo, while the saltwater ones were transferred to Sea Life. Although it is located in the same leisure complex as the hotel where the explosion occurred, where there was still a museum, shops and restaurants, the Berlin headquarters of the aquarium chain was not damaged.

The cause of the explosion is still unknown, but one of the suspicions of the authorities is that the low temperatures caused cracks in the structure, which ended up giving in to the pressure of the thousand tons of water. There are still suspicions that there was material fatigue. Reynolds Polymer Technology, the American company responsible for building and installing the aquarium’s acrylic window, sent a team of specialists to the country to investigate the causes of the incident.

AquaDom was closed for renovations in October 2019. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it remained closed for almost three years, until June of this year. According to the company that manages it, the aquarium housed species ranging from clownfish, like the one from the movie “Finding Nemo”, to seahorses, jellyfish and stingrays.