The Enschede Fireworks Disaster of 2000 | Episode 68

In this episode, homes and buildings will sadly be blown away and destroyed and you'll say fireworks, and I'll say it sure does. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday, History's most dangerous podcast. Together we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and on inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, we're going to try to understand the Netherlands pyrotechnic super boner. I'll tell you my favorite Ann Frank story, and we'll reveal one government's habit of sweeping disasters under the rug by cleaving a transport plane through an apartment building. And if you were listening to this on Patreon, you'd hear why the Little Dutch Boy was so full of crap, you would learn how many dead children's bodies it would take to actually plug a significant dam break, and you'd enjoy an entire extra minisod, this time all about the all time deadliest firework related tragedy of all time, which may come as a surprise, it was the wedding of Marie Antoinette. This is not the show you play around kids or while eating or even in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that can potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoe the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. So I was trying to think, what's the best way to describe Europe to non Europeans. I mean, there are plenty of people out there who think of Europe as just a single country, and everybody there just has a French accent. Italy looks a little like a boot, but the rest of it looked like amorphous blobs, and the whole thing comes together kind of looking like a plastic bag that went through a fan. And then it hit me. One of my favorite memories of comedian Patrise O'Neil was the time that he reimagined the USA as the United Areas of America. It was pretty simple. For example, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, and Colorado all become part of Texas. New York meets up Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, you know, basically all of New England. It was that kind of thing, and there were like forty three countries across Europe. So I started thinking, well, maybe I could explain away Europe by simplifying it. You know, you got France and Germany, and then everything else in that corner of the continent becomes Amsterdamville or whatever. But then it hit me there was that goofy barely mustached apple from Germany that played that game back in the nineteen forties, and it got pretty dark. Oh and off topic. Patrise O'Neil died in twenty eleven from a stroke brought on by diabetes, which I didn't even know was a thing you could do. Well, all that said, let's invade Europe. Pack your fire extinguisher, some ballistic shielding, and your color coded encyclopedia of Dutch tulips. We are going to the Netherlands, the land of windmills and cheese and stroop waffles. I believe this is actually our very first trip to the Netherlands, and a lot of English speakers just think of it as Holland, which really is not the name. I'll explain why. The Netherlands is made up of provinces just like Canada, except they're harder to pronounce. And I apologize in advance for my attempts to pronounce them Groningen, Freezeland, Drenthe, Overgisel, Flavoland, Gelderland, North Holland, South Holland, Zealand, North Brabant, and Limburg. So technically when people just call it Holland, they're really just referring to two of the provinces, which is pretty much the same as calling the United States Dakota or Carolina. The Netherlands are famous for their tulips and windmills and bikes and canals and tall people, and for being below sea level. They are the world's biggest exporter of flowers and the biggest exporter of windmills. Selfies, and if you like windmills, no one in the world does windmills like the Netherlands. They have over twelve hundred to choose from. In their heyday, they used to have over nine thousand, but times change, everything changes. Case in point, all of their lanes are now bike lanes. There are over twenty two million bikes in the Netherlands for a population of only seventeen and a half million, so it's either that or boats. Yeah, kind of famous for canals too. See back in the fifteen and the sixteen hundreds, canals became the netherlands go to source for transportation and defense and poop redistribution. They called it the Golden Age. It was this time in history where all people could really do was just stand there and apploud at how good they were at everything, trade, science, art, I mean, you name it. They were way out of their time, and all of those historic canals that they dug gave the country a more useful and beautiful and poop free aesthetic Unlike a lot of other countries at the time. These actually earned them a special spot on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In fact, this is one town I think it's called Gthorne. Well, this thing is so canally that they call it the Dutch Venice. Best way to picture it is just imagine your town, but with all the roads replaced by canals, just water between every home and every business and so everything is connected by boat. And just because it's storybook beautiful too, it's so beautiful it makes actual Venice look like a large scale industrial accident. Of course, accidents can happen when you live below sea level. Just ask all those specific islanders that we talked about in a recent episode. The Netherlands are kind of famous for not only living below sea level, for thriving. About a quarter of the Netherlands sits below the point where most of the ocean's water wants to just pour in and level off, and that really doesn't even take into account what can happen during storms. At its lowest point, it's about twenty two feet below sea level, which is pretty dangerous and no doubt stressful for residents, but an amazing network of dikes, dams, dunes, floodgates and sea pumps work around the clock to keep the country safe from invasion by sea, so to speak. It's known as one of the seven modern Wonders of the World. So wait, okay, you say. I know about the tulips and the bicycles and the boy with his thumb in the dam. I know about Ann Frank's house, and I even know a little bit about used Kline and his crazy shoulder pads getting booted off Eurovision, But I don't know anything about any Dutch disasters. All right, sit down, I'll take a minute here or there to describe some fairly spectacular disasters from the latter half of the last century. But for now, do you know what the greatest fear of those living below sea level is, yea du It's flooding. And in ten ninety nine, flooding in the Netherlands killed a hundred thousand people, which is crazy, almost crazy enough to border on a little something called an anthropogenical disaster. Uh what, well, okay, we have never done one of these before, but an anthropogenical disaster is one that is so big that it actually results in a noticeable drop in the entire human population. I think we don't really cover a lot of these because it's really hard on me to make death on that kind of a scale fun or funny. Patreon listeners just learned how many dead twelve year old children it would take to plug a dike collapse. I even calculated how many severed fingers it would take in case they were curious, and so you know, the answer is obviously too many. Anyway, let's slow things down a bit for today's story. We're not going to fall into a canal, and we're not going to get run over by bicycles, no you wish. Today we'll be spending our time in Enshkaday, a city in the twenty region of the eastern Netherlands. It's said to have cultural attractions, outdoor spaces and excellent amenities. They call it an urbanized city, but it has a completely seen it countryside, so really the best of all worlds. And it's a university town too, home of the University of twenty And if you're wondering if it's any good out of twenty five thousand plus universities in the world, this one is ranked one hundred and seventieth, so yeah, not too shabby. And Shadai itself sits about one hundred and twenty kilometers or seventy five miles from Amsterdam, which we all know as the dope smoking capital of the Netherlands. It's also where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis. And not everybody has a favorite An Frank story, but I do already laying Once visited Amsterdam in a weird kind of attempt to take a break from drugs, and he told this story of taking a canal tour past and Frank's house. He said that the tour got real somber and quiet as they passed slowly, silently with respect, and then after about twenty seconds, the tour operator kind of perked up, and he started pointing at this cafe basically right beside it, and he said, and that is a great place for pancakes, and everybody loved it. And when I went to actually double check to make sure this was a true story, there is actually a highly rated place for pancakes right by the house. And Shkatea shares a border with a city called Gronow over the fence in Germany. Some people even say that in Shgada translates as near the border, which I can't confirm. I tell you what Chgadia is famous for, but really it's famous for this episode. So you're just gonna have to wait. And on that note, we're going to spend our time today in the quiet suburb of Roombeek. It's a neighborhood made up of tightly packed terraced rowhouses for working class families. And on this date, they were enjoying a beautiful, cloudless Saturday afternoon, taking advantage of the weather to enjoy a cafe, or ride a bike, or plug a dam, you know whatever. The one thing that they weren't thinking about is how most of the world's population bases can and do share proximity with factories or warehouses Roombak does. It blends residential areas with industrial quarters, which's nothing new. It happens all over everywhere, and it has throughout time. In fact, that's been at the heart of at least a few of our past episodes. No spoilers and the date today is May thirteenth, the year two thousand. Sometime around two thirty in the afternoon, the gentle folk of Rombik were lured from their houses by the siren scent of oddly metallic sulfur. People gathered in the streets as the neighborhood quickly fell under the shape of a massive cloud of smoke. Of course, these people were so tall they simply tiptoe to peer over the buildings to see that the billowis smoke trail led to a factory. I didn't really mention how tall these people were, but as far as hi goes, the Dutch are famously tall. Some people call them the tallest in the world. The average male height is five eleven point eight six inches, so basically six feet and the average female height is five foot six and a half inches, And that means for every child and doubled over elderly person there is another well over six feet tall. And the weirdest thing is in the eighteen hundreds, not even that long ago, they were some of the shortest people in Europe, but there was just something about being wealthy with a good diet and hygiene that made them the tallest by the nineteen fifties. Of course, what grows up must come down, and it turns out that since the two thousands began, Dutch people have been shrinking. I mean overall. It's a population not literally. The government said that they've let in so many people from short population groups that it wrecked all their hard work, like letting prize racehorses breed with donkeys over time, which I will tell you right now is not a flattering analogy. Actually, the tallest group in the world are really the Dinka tribe of Sudan or the Tutsi people of Rwanda and Burunda in Africa. Again, they have an average height of six feet, but individuals can stand well into their seven foot range. And again they'd believe that a combination of genetics and diet and environmental factors gave them the high score. I also hear that these reindeer herding tribes of northern China and Siberia also deserve runner up status. But getting back to the neighborhood, Like I said, this was more of a mixed use kind of a neighborhood. And yes, the smoke originated at a factory, but generally people didn't know what it was for. Still, who doesn't want to watch a factory burned down? Am I right? In fact, the streets became so clogged with gawkers that fire trucks rolling up to the scene could not beg or honk their way through these crowds. They were completely got blocked. The police had to come and push people out of the way, and then tow trucks had to come and pull the police cars out of the way. And there may be a reason for all this. See according to research, staring into a fire can apparently reduce your blood pressure and induce this kind of hit no trance like state. It probably goes back to our prehistoric cave people days when fire was our best friend. It kept us warm, and it cooked our food, and it kept animals away during the night. So staring at fire is good for you? Then well I'm about to tell you no, and then I'm going to tell you why As soon as the path was clear enough to let the fire trucks through, firefighters grab their gear and rushed straight into the smoking factory yard. They had been called in by a neighbor who much liked them. Did not know what the factory actually did or make. They thought it was kind of a paper factory. So let's see just how wrong they were. A local kid named Danny Devrees was on the scene with his camera and just framed up a perfect shot of the whole thing. When a firework flew by. It caught him off guard as the seemingly completely out of place whistle of a firework, and multiply a few of the witnesses started peddling backwards. The problem was this fire call was becoming complicated, and this complicated things by inspiring a lot more LOOKI loose to jam up the block who was letting off fireworks at a time like this. Not that it wasn't welcome, I mean the Dutch do love a good fireworks display. It was just add timing, you know, celebrating a fire Here is a thing about Dutch people and fireworks. The Netherlands has the greatest percentage of pyromaniacs in the world, that's not true. I just made that up. However, Americans living in the Netherlands will tell you, with a bit of a hitch in their throat that the Dutch love fireworks even more than they do. My dog paid at fireworks before his hearing went away, and for a week around any firework holiday here you could count on an unannounced blast or twelve at any point during the day or night. In the Netherlands, fireworks are such a staple around the New Year that from December to January, if you have any kind of noise sensitivity or anxiety issue, they say it's best to just leave the country. It's said to be a pretty law abiding place with a lot of rules and governance. So pseudopsychologists suggest that they love blowing things up out of a misplaced sense of rebellion. Who knows the world has definitely suffered more from a me first, ego driven selfishness that comes from excessive personal insecurity. That's not even an insult. Again, it's just psychology, and believe me, I get it. People need the release and some people just want to see things that completely go against their otherwise workaday lives and explosions check that box. Nicely. At first, the fire seemed pretty reasonable. Firefighters entered what appeared to be a mercifully empty building. They were closed for business over the weekend, so they wouldn't have to worry about having to carry any employees out to safety. They figured they could just knock out any hotspots and they'd be back home and cleaned up by dinner. However, Mike Tyson famously said that no plan survives that first punch to the face, and they took what they saw next like a gut punch. Their anxiety and blood pressure would a spiked the moment that they saw their very first pyrotechnic whistle past them. They had climbed into what they thought was a cave, only to find out that it was actually the mouth of a monster, and they called for reinforcements immediately. Welcome to the s E Fireworks Factory of Enchgida, Netherlands. That you wish it was a paper factory right about now. So what are we talking about here? Sparklers, Catherine Wheels, Roman candles, noop. We are standing in one of the leading suppliers of industrial grade fireworks in the entire country, a country I remind you almost sexually attracted to explosions, and this building is on fire. Picture a factory warehouse compound consisting of two large hangars, a manufacturing workshop, and enough storage containers to hold about one hundred and sixty tons of explosives. Try to imagine that you just found out there are forty Dodge caravans worth of high grade explosives in your neighborhood that you had no idea about. And when I say high grade, we've visited some pretty unusual fireworks disasters on this show before, and we've talked about how commercial fireworks are kind of pressed into balls that get mortared into the sky off a barge. While as a rule of thumb, if you think of the entire outside of an explosive shell, for every inch of that shell's diameter the width of the shell, every inch equals one hundred feet of explosion. That is a blast that reaches as far as six Dodge caravans parked bumper to bumper. The biggest shells commonly used are twelve inches, which means the burst pattern you see at public fireworks displays is probably about twelve hundred feet or seventy five Dodge caravans. And I should mention because it is important to this episode. These things are not designed to go off at ground level. In fact, that's something about fireworks that most people don't know or never really thought about. But they're actually two bombs in one. There is a separate charge called the lift charge, and that goes off first in a controlled release rather than an explosion, and that helps carry the burst charge up, up and away. This is personally not anything that you want to be anywhere near. But let's say that you're sitting there, just listening to this podcast right now, with a commercial grade firework in your lap and the fuse is getting kind of used up. Would you know what to do well? In that situation? You would be missed. I really hate losing listeners to utterly survivable scenarios which can happen, but not if I can help it. Did you know across America alone, fireworks blow off enough limbs, fingers, and eyeballs to fill a Dodge Caravan right up to the cabin light. Yeah, for those of you who love the Dodge Caravan as a unit of measurement, I am really giving it to you today. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, that's eyeballs. About one in three legally purchased fireworks contained modified fuses, band chemicals, or unsafe levels of explosive materials, So good luck. Now, your odds of coming into contact with a commercial grade firework are about one in six hundred and fifty two thousand. But let's say that you did some flaming projectile flew by and played tag. I know you're thinking a missile like that would probably just blow some cartoonishly perfect hole through your torso and then you die. Well again, you wish. Most firework injuries result in burns and limb injuries. The first thing you're going to want want to do is assess the situation, which isn't easy because everyone's first instinct is to grab and cradle the injury, you know, to protect it from further injury, like how we blink to protect our eyes, just on a bigger level. But you really have to find out what the injury is. So let's go with a hand injury with burns and some gnarly finger realignment. Unless the wound insiddenly cauterized itself, there's gonna be blood, and stopping blood loss is an obvious first step. Blood pressure keeps you alive, and it keeps oxygen flowing to your brain and no blood make for not make so think good, Apply as much pressure as you need to stop the actual bleeding, and use something clean to prevent infection. Burns and cuts are gateways for blood infections, and those are no joke. In fact, obviously, every cream and ointment on the market are designed to help speed healing and maybe even provide some kind of topical pain relief, but they can actually cause infections in more serious injuries. So when you feel like I should put something on that, that thing should probably just be a medical bill. Now, the best way to reduce swelling from an injury is to elevate the wound above the heart. It reduces bleeding and that terrible throbbing pain. Now, if you hold up both your hands and you can no longer count past nine or seven or three, here's what you need to know. If you blow off a finger, and I'm actually gonna do this backwards, because the first step is going to feel a nitpicky, and some percentage of you will race to the hospital holding your finger with your teeth the way a pirate holds a knife. Ideally, you're gonna want to put that thing on ice, but not on ice or it's gonna get freezer burnt and destroy more tissue. It's best to put the thing in a container or a bag of ice, or a pack of frozen food, just whatever you've got. It's also best to put it in the cleanest water type bag that you can find, you know, like a ziplog or something. And pro tip if you don't actually have ice, just fill a bag with cold ass water and use that like a reverse hot water bottle. And before you do that, it's best to it in moist gauze or a towel. And if you're going to take the bus to the hospital and have time to kill, it's not a bad idea to clean the injury, but not with soap. Just use water or saline solution if you've got it. And if it's still attached, like blown not completely off, try securing it with medical tape or even a splint like a popsicle stick, whatever you can use to immobilize it while keeping it clean. And if you are still waiting for your bus but you start feeling clammy or pale, or you're breathing is shallowing, it sounds like you might be entering shock, and the best thing in this situation is just to sit down with your legs elevated and maybe throw in a blanket to help you keep warm. Definitely do go to a hospital though. See fireworks are one of those things that can cause a lot of damage inside that you're not even seeing. If you google fireworks accidents and you know roughly what a skeletal human hand is supposed to look like. Well, an X ray of a post accident in hand is going to look like a hand, but everything inside is going to look more like a junk drawer. And you probably got burned to boot. And the best thing for burns is to cool them with cool but not cold water. You don't put ice on it either, just bring the temperature down slowly. You're damaged, but this is going to help prevent permanent damage. Then cover the burn with a clean, nonstick dressing or cloth. But never, never, never use fluffy materials like cotton balls, because they're going to stick right into the injury and then they're going to have to be forcibly removed after the fact, which will be hard to do with a hand that looks like a lawnmower ran over it or no eyes. That's right. The most common injury besides finger reassignment are eyeballs. Okay, so you're trying to decide if your firework is really lit or not, and it proves itself. A lot of things can go wrong with an eye. Just think how many ways could you damage a single grape. If you have any kind of eye injury, Don't rub it, which yes, I completely understand is the first and only thing that you actually want to do. Just don't. This can seriously complicate a cut and create all kinds of haboc, especially if you've got any kind of debris launched in it, unless, of course there's blood squirting out of it, in which case, yeah, you're probably gonna want to put a little pressure on it. And that's the trade. And here's what I will tell you. Unless you are blank springing hemoglobin, don't do anything about it. Don't rub it, don't put drops or ointments on it. You're just gonna want to create some kind of diy shield to protect it and cover the eye. I know a guy who one time taped a styrofoam cup to his face to protect his eye. And believe it or not, if you get an actual cut on your eye, just a small one, they will actually heal on their own. You know that thing where you get a giant red bruise on the white part of the eye, Well that can go away on its own, too, But if you have a scratch across the actual iris, or a fully blood red eye, or a piece of shrapnel literally hanging out of it, it is time to walk, not run, to the high hospital. There are a lot of things we talk about on the show, and a lot of things that you can do to help yourself, and it's always my pleasure to bring them to you, and we've talked about a few here. But the truth is, sometimes all that you're going to be able to do is triage, stay calm, and get to a professional And if you have part of a rocket sticking out of your face or a rocket sized hole in your chest, this is one of those times. You know that scene in the Wedding Singer where Adam Sandler's yelling that some piece of information would have been more useful yesterday, Well, I am not sure how to say that in Dutch, but some fire captain sure would have. Because a fireworks factory and a paper factory are very different animals when you set them on fire or a more smoke poured from the building by the second as all the ingredients of exploding powder began to ignite. The soundtrack to this display was the increasing warbling, whistle and scream of fireworks, followed by the telltale crackling detonations. The overlap noise built to a crescendo that sent people running for cover as rockets exploded and careened back onto along with everything else the streets. The sound grew into an impossible cacophony as the entire sky around the planet erupted with small missiles flaring in every possible direction, leaving smoke, trails and noise in their wake. And the fire had spread within the compound, reaching the containers used to store the explosive materials. And I should point out explosive materials like this should really be stored in underground bunkers for lack of a better term. In the event of an explosion, a bunker will help redirect a blast upwards instead of Willie Milly in all directions will not hear. All the explosives had been stored in basic shipping containers arranged closely together in the yard one of the containers, labeled E two, just sat there, bathed in flames. By this time owners of the site had arrived, saw what was happening. Remember they needed to be somewhere else, and then hot footed out of their back to the car. Firefighters knew they were done. They had to drop their gear and run for their lives. When you take the video that was taken on this day and you slow it down, what you see from outside is a glow through the smoke, and that was the fire, and it was growing exponentially out of control. And I should point out these kind of containers have been tested against fire and explosions and they're usually able to with stand fire for about four minutes. So you two just sat there, bathed in flames until it exploded. And this blast damaged all the surrounding storage units, which exposed their contents to the raging fire, and the result was a colossal explosion of the whole lot. The force of the blast was the equivalent of about five tons of T and T, and it created a four hundred and forty foot fireball big enough to blow away a lot more than the paint off a thousand dollar lodge. Caravans, fifteen streets were burned to ashes. A massive shockwave emptied bladders, collapse buildings, and blue windows and storefronts out everywhere in all directions. You'd be shocked at the number of serious injuries that are caused by nothing but flying glass, especially ocular injuries. Debris flew for miles. Fifteen hundred homes were damaged, and another four hundred were just outright destroyed. And for comparison, the first blast was heard nine miles or fourteen kilometers away, but the larger collective blast was heard thirty five miles or sixty kilometers away. That kid, debries Huam with a camera had stood calmly recording the whole thing until the explosion knocked him flying off his feet. By all accounts, the only thing that came even close to comparison ever happening in this part of the world would have been the Allied bombing during World War II. Firefighters, police and medical personnel worked tirelessly to rescue survivors, treat the injured, and contain the fire. And while a colossal white cloud rose into the sky over the scene, and this really is the thing, fireworks kept erupting. They never stopped. They were only quieter now that everybody had tonightis nine hundred and seventy four people were badly injured and taken to hospital. And when I say badly injured, we're talking about people burned by projectiles, riddled with impracticabris, crushed under walls and roofs of collapsing buildings, and people who probably prolapsed themselves from the shock of it all. Fifty of those were in critical condition. And when all was said and done and all the debris was removed, twenty three people were found dead, including four of the first firefighters to arrive at the scene. So what the hell happened? The scene of the disaster and rescue was the kind of thing that would have made Roland Emeric jealous. The entire neighborhood had been completely wiped out, and what buildings and homes remained they needed to be evacuated and demolished, making another fifteen hundred locals homeless. In North America, they've tried to change the term from homeless to unhoused. Homeless makes it sound like you don't have a home, but unhoused makes it sound like you had an actual house and then you lost it. And I don't mean because the mortgage got to be too much. I mean it like you left the house without your keys and now you suffer from unhousman. I don't know who this new language is supposed to be making feel better, but oddly I doubt it's the homeless. The damage to Enescaatea was about four hundred and eighty six million dollars. The damage to the collective mental health of the locals could not have a price tag associated with it. The scale of the disaster caught the entire country's attention and the authorities. Maybe the people of Enchgadae and the fire department didn't know what was going on there, but the police did. Five years before this, they had actually investigated the owners of the company for running a black market for illegal fireworks. The owners were two guys named Rude Baker and Willem Peter. Now that the place had blown up and wafted away, they wanted to investigate for improper storage of fireworks, inadequate fire suppression systems, and failure to comply with existing safety regulations. Not Baker and Peter, though, they were considered suspects and the authorities issued international warrants for their arrest, but they were like, are they really international? And they fled like rats from a ship. But when it comes to police work, since the first person to rat gets the cheese, baker turned himself in only because Peter turned himself in first. The Ousting Commission was set up to figure out the cause or causes of the disaster. Let me say this though, it has been said that the Dutch government's appointment of an independent commission set in quotes to look into the cause or causes of the catastrophe only inspired feeling of distrust. For one thing, they called for a news blackout regarding the owners of se fireworks because they quote needed some peace and quiet. For another, only eight years earlier, in nineteen ninety two, and Israeli transport plane crashed in the Amsterdam suburb of bill Jamir, dramatically slicing through an apartment building and killing forty three people. What happened, well, the engines fell off. It was a boeing. What can you say? And yeah, if you look at photos, this is a huge deal. However, the resulting investigation it didn't hand down any kind of real consequences to anyone involved. Forty three people died and the authority said that the plane had only carried flowers and perfume. They were kind of describing it like it was on a mission of love. But when survivors from the apartment block started to suffer from exposure to jet fuel asbestos, three of the four ingredients in sarah nerve gas, kerosene, and depleted uranium, questions were raised. Everything got swept behind the veil of secrecy and the government's awe. Shock's attitude did not set well with anyone with an intact cerebellum. People criticized the initial emergency response as being too slow, and they also bitched about the lack of coordination and communication after the crash. Basically, to the public, there was a very clear pattern of an increasing lack of responsibility on the part of businesses and the authorities. It's almost like they were in cohoots together. Anyway, let's see how this investigation goes. The Ustin Commission started with three causes in mind. First, the fire was caused by human error while handling fireworks, but this all happened on a Saturday, so not likely. Second, the fire was caused by self combustion of explosive material in the workshop, but temperatures inside the workshop reached nowhere near close enough or anything like that to happen. And third, there were reported cases of arson recently in the area. We'll have to see about that. But first investigators questioned the owners relentlessly about everything. They had found two thousand pounds of explosives in the workshop area alone. And do you know how many pounds are allowed to be in a workshop on the weekend? Zero? It's zero, zero pounds. That would be zero pounds according to regulations. It should have been in the storage facilities, but hey, maybe it just wouldn't fit. See the storage was maxed out, which obviously you weren't allowed to do either, and it was packed with the type of fireworks that they had no authorization to even store. See. Fireworks are rated based on their trustworthiness. Type four present a very low fire risk, Type three pose a fire hazard and a minor blastom projectile threat. We'll have Type two present a more serious projectile hazard, but do not have the mass explosive risk, and Type one seemingly cannot wait to explode. Se fireworks had been authorized to store one hundred and thirty six tons of type four and two tons of type three fireworks. What they actually had were sixteen tons of Type four, one hundred and fifty three tons of Type three, five tons of Type two, and one and a half tons of Type one. That's more than one hundred and seventy five tons of explosives crammed into a one hundred and sixty ton bag. And the containers in the factory yard were packed together, like I said, not separated by earthen walls, which is traditionally the safest way to do this. None of the storage containers had been tested, and there was no fire detection or extinguishing apparatus to be found. The leading pyrotechnic expert on the Berlin Council Office for Criminal Investigations actually visited the site a year earlier, and he confirmed the lack of precautions or paperwork or general concern for safety. In his words, the whole depot was full of striking irregularities right in the middle of a residential area. Still, amazingly, seven days before the blast, the factory had actually undergone and passed a safety regulation inspection with flying colors. And you say, well, that doesn't really sound right. Well, I will point out that the head inspector was later fired for suspicion of accepting bribes, and three days before the blast, aerial photos were actually taken over in Skatea and they showed that the container doors in the storage yard had been left open. One of the firefighters on the scene said that he saw open doors too, and like I always say, explosions are like magic erasers for evidence, so we don't know for sure. However, if they had been left open on D Day, this definitely would have helped feed the explosion. People also became quite pissy about the official response to the disaster. The committee wrote that the hasty departure of the owners should have been interpreted as a signal of impending disaster, and then went on to blame the fire crews for not picking up on the hint, and I say, hey, wait to kick a guy when he's dead. They also caught flak for deciding not to evacuate the people from the street and the surrounding homes, And yes, this I can completely side with. However, that is the kind of comment clearly made by someone sitting behind a desk who has never actually tried to arrange an evacuation of a population in real time. Oh and the fire response. Like I said, police cars had to be towed out of the way to allow fire trucks in. And you know what gives fireworks that super bright and colorful quality, Well, a lot of the time it's magnesium, pretty popular stuff. And do you know what happens when you pour water onto magnesium? Nothing good unless you like the challenge of dodging exploding chemicals. See magnesium burns at a temperature over a thousand degrees celsius or eighteen hundred fahrenheit, And to say that it reacts dramatically is criminally under selling it. As a result, for firemen lost their lives. It really seems that absolutely everything that could have been mismanaged was and because no one knew where to cleanly point a finger, fingers were pointing everywhere. According to De Groene Amsterdamer, a Dutch magazine that I don't know how to pronounce, a whistleblower named Paul van Buttenen said that there had actually been a government cover up. Two detectives previously reported problems with the public prosecutor investigation, but the department that handles internal investigations concluded that there was no evidence and that they needed to be immediately fired. Van Bututenen had evidence that the detectives had been telling the truth and also that the government had been lying. He had evidence that the quote independent investigation was in cahoots with the public prosecutor, which was another obvious no no. He also had copies of the company's administration and paperwork that the authorities had claimed was all lost in the fire. Well. He took all of this evidence to the Dutch Safety Board, but they told him to go kick rocks. And why, oh, I don't know. Maybe because various government ministers had a motive to conceal their own mistakes. Maybe because official permission to store explosives had been granted by the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and who can say. The prosecutors clearly wanted the heads of the s fireworks owners. Van Butenant believed that the prosecutors were wrong, but he believed that they were only doing this because they were being pressured into solving the case quickly, not because they were just out and out evil. Rud Becker, one of the owners, took all of his fingers and I will point out he still had all ten and he pointed them all at the previous owner of the factory, a guy named Harm Smollenbrook. He said that it was his responsibility that he set the entire thing up. They'd only really owned the company since nineteen ninety eight, and Smolenbrook still owned the land and the buildings which he rented to s Fireworks. They said that eventually he wanted to sell the land into the municipality, but before that could happen, he was going to need to get rid of the tenants, and what better way to do that than burn down and blow up the factory. And interestingly, at that time, a local arsonist named Andre Deries was arrested and convicted of burning down the factory. Mind you, he was later acquitted because, as it turns out, there was a bit of a rush to judgment and there was no actual evidence that connected him to the factory fire. In April of two thousand and two, a Dutch court sentenced the owners of s He Fireworks to six months for importing and selling illegal fireworks, breaking safety codes, and violating storage licenses. E'll noticed that I didn't mention any of the criminal charges for negligence, manslaughter, or environmental offenses. This was clearly the lightest slap on the wrist possible. Actually, the fact that they left the court as free men with suspended sentences that makes it the lightest lap on the rest possible. And it's a real theme on this show for business owners. To walk away from disaster on the shoulders of the courts, you need an awful big carpet and an awful big broom and an awfully big set of balls to sweep this all away. On the plus side, within weeks of the disaster, three separate illegal firework depots were closed across the area, including one only twelve miles or twenty kilometers away. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands promised that the entire nation would help to rebuild Rumbick, and the local council for Rumbek put the decision making process directly into the hands of those who had suffered the most. They said that they are the ones who should be able to decide what Rumbiak would become. A futuristic spaceport, a four dimensional subdivision na. They wanted their neighborhood return to the state that it once was, a warm, friendly neighborhood, and their wishes were honored. In America, if you manufacture fireworks, you have to worry about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. TV and movies called them the ATF, but it's actually the ATFE. And if you're wondering why the Department of Transportation cares about fireworks, well, the DOT is responsible for repairing and replacing roads after catastrophic events. And my point being here is that in the Netherlands at the time, manufacturers were more worried about pizza deliveries finding them than government agencies bunging out of black helicopters through their skylights. This disaster did change Dutch fireworks regulations and safety protocols. It also raised awareness about the risks associated with storing hazardous materials in residential areas and the importance of safety measures in industrial facilities. On the spot where the explosion took place, the original factory floor was left in place. It had a cement for foundation that was crushed by the explosion, and in the years since it's been overtaken by nature, and I think they left it this way as an ode to the idea that time should heal all wounds. The Enchicgade fireworks disaster of two thousand was one of the most significant and devastating industrial accidents in the history of the Netherlands, and according to Google, it is the worst in the world. We've been a lot of places together on the show, but no one's really laid out the red carpet this aggressively before. So far this year, there's already been a fireworks explosion in a factory in Thailand and one in India that killed dozens and injured hundreds. All that was left were debris and body parts and hopefully the lessons that go on to keep us all safer and more educated about firework safety. But we say that a lot with firework disaster. Between Marie Antoinette's wedding massacre two hundred and fifty years ago and the people who are no doubt going to answer the question what is the sound of two hands clapping by banging their wrists or elbows together? After this weekend's fireworks fiasco, I'm afraid it appears we've learned nothing. And it's true. I am writing this on the eve of the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada, where all Canadians come together to celebrate the fact that Queen Dorag died. Actually, we'd do it to celebrate her birthday. The only other things I can tell you or that her birth was vaginal and that her death was of a hemorrhagic stroke. Still, it's better than getting your head canued by a firework. On that happy note, if you are a regular listener, I ask you to consider becoming a supporter. It would really help fulfill my dream of doing this full time. And if you and a few thousand of your friends could spare a buck or two, you would really help keep the show and frankly me going. Before I tell you about Patreon, if you are into it but you're not looking for a whole relationship, you can visit buy me a coffee dot com slash doomsday to make a one time donation. And for those of you who do, I appreciate you deeply. Still, I think getting episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and with additional ridiculously interesting material a niche new episode It's worth it, and if you agree, you can find out more at patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo, and I want to quickly shout out some supporters James Weiss, Amanda Peyton, Ray Hughes, Edward Bartlett, Carrie Shay, Psych Banana, Miki Aker Smith and Fancy Pants, Christina Dressler, Henley, Katherine Hacklan, Timothy Clark, Jeff Fernhauber, Antonia Doolan, Dan Jones, Just Mike, and Lori Drummond Chernuchin. For supporting me on Patreon, you can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or you can fire me an email to Doomsday Pod at gmail dot com. I genuinely do love here from you. However, word of warning, I can be slow to respond. Creating this show takes about one hundred and fifty hours a month, and and I work three other jobs. So yeah. But on a brighter note, older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please think about leaving a review and tell your friends. And I always thank my Patreon listeners old and new for their support and encouragement. But if you can spare the money, and I had to choose, I also ask you to consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers. Offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmenic dot CAA. On the next episode, they say the journey is more important than the destination. But replace important with lethal and you've got a story. When next we meet, we discover a whole new way to die in the mountains. It's the Cavalisi cable car disaster of nineteen seventy six. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening.