A gigantic fish tank at a leisure complex in the centre of Berlin burst early on Friday, prompting a major emergency response.
One hundred firefighters were at the scene, where photos showed a wave of devastation in and around the AquaDom tourist attraction.
The tank was the world’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium at 14 metres (46 ft) in height, according to the website of the DomAquaree complex, which houses a Radisson hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants.
Und so sieht es drin aus #aquarium #berlin pic.twitter.com/QyiImxbxvW
— rbb|24 (@rbb24) December 16, 2022
Footage from inside the complex on Friday showed huge shards of glass lying strewn on the floor.
German police spokesman Martin Stralau said officers were alerted to the leak shortly before 6am local time.
“In addition to the unbelievable maritime damage... two people were injured by glass splinters,” Berlin police said on Twitter.
The tank in our hotel….blew? #berlin #radisson #hotel #aquarium pic.twitter.com/4pfheKSc4G
— Larissa (@lararimmer) December 16, 2022
The tank contained 1,500 tropical fish before the incident and is a major tourist attraction in the German capital.Among the 80 types of fish it housed were blue tang and clownfish, the species known from the popular animated movie Finding Nemo.
Emergency services shut a major road next to the complex that leads from Alexanderplatz toward the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin due to the large volume of water that had flooded out of the building.
The road and pavements outside the complex were littered with debris.
Buses were sent to the complex to provide shelter for hotel guests leaving the building, police said on Twitter, as outside temperatures in Berlin were around -7C.
Mayor Franziska Giffey said the incident had unleashed a “veritable tsunami” of water but the early morning timing had prevented far more injuries.
“Despite all the destruction, we were still very lucky,” she said. “We would have had terrible human damage” had the aquarium burst even an hour later, once more people were awake and in the hotel and the surrounding area, she said.
“Unfortunately, none of the 1,500 fish could be saved,” Ms Giffey said.
Efforts were under way on Friday afternoon to save an additional 400 to 500 smaller fish housed in aquariums underneath the hotel lobby. Without electricity, their tanks were not receiving the necessary oxygen for them to survive, officials said.
“Now it’s about evacuating them quickly,” Almut Neumann, a city official in charge of environmental issues for Berlin’s Mitte district, told German news agency dpa.
Various organisations, including Berlin Zoo, offered to take in the surviving fish.
Guests shared their astonishment on Twitter, with Niklas Scheele writing: “The fish tank of my hotel just exploded in the middle of the night WHAT’S GOING ON”.
There was speculation that freezing temperatures contributed to the leak but Mr Stralau said the cause of the incident is still being investigated.
The company that owns the AquaDom, Union Investment Real Estate, said in a statement that the reasons for the incident were "still unclear".
