Huge Berlin Aquarium Bursts, Thousands of Exotic Fish Dead

VIVA – A huge aquarium in Berlin burst on Friday, December 17, 2022, spilling a million liters of water, about 1,500 exotic fish dead and debris scattered across the main street in the Mitte district.

About 100 emergency responders rushed to the site, a leisure complex that houses a Radisson hotel, a museum as well as a giant aquarium called Sea Life Berlin as the world's largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium at 14 meters high.

A hotel guest Sandra Weeser, spoke of the chaos, "The whole aquarium broke and what was left was destruction. A lot of dead fish, debris," she explained, as quoted from Reuters, Sunday, October 18, 2022.

Then, a spokesman for Union Investments, which manages the real estate fund that owns the property, said 1,500 fish from the aquarium died.

Efforts are underway to rescue fish from several small tanks that were near AquaDom and which escaped the destruction but suffered a power outage in the building.

Luckily, the accident happened early in the morning, when there was hardly anyone around, Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey said. "If this had not happened at 5.45 am but even just an hour later, then we would probably have lost a lot of people to report," broadcaster RBB quoted Giffey as saying.

Two people, including a hotel employee, were injured by broken glass, and emergency services asked about 350 hotel guests to pack up their belongings and leave amid fears of structural damage, but there were no fatalities.

Buses were sent to transport hotel guests to temporary shelters, police said, as temperatures outside Berlin in the morning hovered around -7 degrees Celsius.

Sea Life Berlin said in a statement that its team was shocked by the incident and was trying to get more information from the owner of AquaDom about what caused the incident. The company, which has been offering glass elevator rides through the AquaDom aquarium, said it would remain closed until further notice.

Emergency services closed the main road next to the complex leading from Alexanderplatz towards the Brandenburg Gate due to a large amount of water, fish, and debris that flooded the building.

The aquarium was last refurbished in 2020, according to the DomAquaree complex website. During the upgrade work, all water was drained from the tanks, and the fish were moved to aquariums in the basement of the building, where there is a fish maintenance facility, the statement said.