A Berlin company that owns an aquarium that housed around 1,500 exotic fish has expressed “concern” after an explosion on Friday morning spilled 1 million liters of water and garbage onto a high street in the busy Mitte district, DPA and Agerpres reported. .

Aquadom in Berlin before the explosionPhoto: Annette Riedl / AFP / Profimedia

About 100 crew members quickly arrived at the scene of the incident at the leisure complex in the German capital, which includes the Radisson Hotel, a museum and an oceanarium.

Sea Life Berlin offered glass-walled elevator tours of the Aquadom aquarium, which the leisure center said was the largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium in the world at 14 meters high. Two people were injured by shards of glass, and police evacuated the hotel from the complex due to fears of structural damage to the building.

“Just chaos. The entire aquarium exploded and what was left was completely destroyed. A lot of dead fish, garbage,” Sandra Wieser, one of the hotel’s guests, told Reuters.

Search and rescue dogs searched the first floor of the building as strewn debris blocked rescuers’ access, but no victims were found, Berlin’s fire department said on Twitter.

A spokesman for the fire service told Reuters that the cause of the AquaDom aquarium explosion is unknown.

The owner company regrets that so many fish died

The cause of the explosion in the giant water cylinder is still “completely unclear,” Union Investment spokesman Fabian Hellbusch said.

“We are currently trying to get a more accurate picture of the situation and the damage caused in coordination with the police and firefighters on the scene. “We deeply regret that a large number of fish kept in the Aquadome… have died due to a serious failure of the acrylic cylinder and water leakage,” the company said.

Other smaller aquariums were not destroyed, the quoted source said.

In 2019 and 2020, construction works and major repairs of the aquadome were carried out.

After a break caused by the coronavirus, the oceanarium reopened in 2022.

An aquarium containing about 1,500 exotic fish exploded on Friday morning, spilling a million liters of water and debris onto a major artery in the busy Mitte district, Reuters reported from emergency services.