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Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin
- Fricken 4y agoWeird. Earlier today I awoke from a nap after strange dreams and attempted to produce images in midjourney of a giant aquarium breaking. I must psychic or something.
- passwordoops 4y agoShit happens with my wife All. The. Time. We're rational enough to mostly chalk it up to coincidence or selection bias, but not calculating enough to take advantage of gullible people (Edited to mention selection bias)
- pauletienney 4y agoFor pure curiosity, could you give us some examples of what happen with your wife? Thx
- passwordoops 4y agoCase in point - yesterday morning she told me about a vivid dream of a major apartment fire she had. Look what just happened in Lyon [0]. You could dream about a fire for any reason, and fires are unfortunately common enough to at least make local news so unconsciously scanning a headline during the day may plant a "dream worm". But this happens quite often, even for personal things, like details of the birth of our first kid a couple of weeks before the due date, down to the amount and color of hair, the precise time for a natural birth, and the mino complications right after. It always gives me split second pause because I want to believe ("quantum entanglement" is weird or witchery is real - she's East European after all). But there's almost always a good explanation for the percieved prescience. [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63997158 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63997158
- blueflow 4y agoYou can chalk it up to selection bias, you never remember the predictions that were just garbage.
- namero999 4y agoInteresting. I'm not sure chalking up an observation is the rational approach. I'd be looking into the Pauli-Jung conjecture before doing so.
- Fricken 4y agoIt's Midjourney. It has me wandering the uncanny valley for hours every day, there is so much undiscovered country. My sleep is disrupted. I'm in an altered state and I'm more tuned to recognizing coincidences and generally making associations between images that may or may not be floating around in the latent space.
- zython 4y agoPlease dream of me winning the lottery and or becoming 10x dev.
- PainfullyNormal 4y agoWin the lottery and become a 10x dev and maybe he'll dream about it.
- jacquesm 4y agoAnd even before it happened. But stated afterwards.
- koonsolo 4y agoYou do realise that becoming a 10x dev will mean you're getting underpaid? It's better to become a 0.1x developer so you're sure you're getting the better end of the deal ;).
- voakbasda 4y agoSpeaking as a 10x dev, this is truth. I have felt underpaid most of my career. After 30 years, I don’t give as much at work anymore. I bought a farm and most of my energy goes there instead. I suggest wishing for a healthy balanced life. No happiness comes from being undervalued and underutilized.
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoWhy would you ever want to become a 10x dev instead of winning the lottery?
- pvaldes 4y agoAgain sleeping with the TV news channel turned on?
- cardiffspaceman 4y agoIn my reading I have read of several such occurrences, and experienced one myself. On 2 Feb 1990 I fell asleep in front of the TV and dreamed I was a journalist in Cape Town, South Africa. There was buzz about a possible speech by F.W. de Klerk in front of Parliament. I was concerned that I needed a snack on the way, and hoped that the gov't would provide donuts. Then I woke up and CNN was nagging me that de Klerk was about to address Parliament. The subject was South Africa transitioning out of apartheid.
- jl6 4y agoWow, how do you make pieces of glass that size?
- __alexs 4y agoI think they are acrylic, not glass.
- MengerSponge 4y agoCorrect. https://www.bestpub.com/books/product/cid-151.html https://www.bestpub.com/books/product/cid-151.html
- rjzzleep 4y agoIt looks to me as if they're actually a lot of smaller pieces put together, but maybe I see it incorrectly. Maybe one day, architects will stop designing things that are structural liabilities, or engineers actually get to say no to it before construction starts.
- mirekrusin 4y agoThey could make it from concrete.
- ArchitectAnon 4y agoIncredibly unlikely for any part of the structure to have been designed by an architect, most likely a highly specialist subcontractor design item. Our insurance would not cover it and it is illegal for architects to practice without insurance in many EU countries. The closest any architect would get to this is to go to a big fish tank company and say I want a big fish tank with diameter x and height y, can you do it and how much will it be...
- jacquesm 4y agoI don't understand your comment. Architects did not design this fishtank, engineers did, ones that specialize in such constructions. Whether or not the design was at fault or there were construction or maintenance issues or the tank was modified out-of-spec, whether there was damage due to the recent renovations are all open questions. Structural engineers take their work very seriously, much more seriously than your typical software person and you can bet that any and all lessons learned from this incident will be incorporated into future designs. They don't just slap stuff together for the laughs and call it a day.
- 01acheru 4y agoIMHO there should be a DE/German tag in the title. edit: title has been edited since this comment
- WitCanStain 4y agoSadly I don't read German, was anyone injured?
- beanjuice 4y ago2 people, 1500 fish
- whatsthatabout 4y ago2 people got injured and mostly all fish are dead...
- lynx23 4y agoHumans are horrible creatures.
- seirim 4y agoIt was an accident though, surely, and they didn't mean to hurt the fish.
- lynx23 4y agoYou mean, they put the fish behind glass in a artificial habitat, which apparently was not built well enough to not break. And you still think humans were just well-meaning? How would you feel if someone took you and your family, and put ya all behind glass, for others to watch? Oh, and there will be an elevator going through your new habitat? Still just fine? I told ya, humans are horrible creatures, they dont even see the errors of their own way.
- lqet 4y agoPrevious thread, with link to article in English: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34012469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34012469 Before: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.5716681/1280x720 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.5716681/1280x720 After: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.5716703/860x1290 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.5716703/860x1290 It seems like the inner glass (for the elevator shaft) is still intact.
- jacquesm 4y agoWhat a pity, it looks amazing.
- raydiatian 4y ago“So long, and thanks for all the fish.” — This Aquarium, probably
- mid-kid 4y agoCame here for this reply
- ineil 4y ago
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- wyuenho 4y agoFrom the guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. HN really needs a European mod to maintain the quality of this board.
- iamben 4y agoThere's an engineering angle here that I think a lot of us probably find interesting?
- wyuenho 4y agoI guarantee you car crashes has more engineering angles than this. There's not even a post-mortem here.
- thom 4y agoI think large-scale engineering failures in other disciplines are always of interest here.
- wyuenho 4y agoIt's interesting only if there's a detailed report on the reasons. Otherwise this piece is news is just a "oh", instead of a "a-ha".
- thom 4y agoI think we're richer for having this type of content, not least because someone has posted elsethread that the early signs point to material fatigue. The system works as far as I can see, and I think we're some way off the front page of HN being flooded by TikToks.
- wyuenho 4y agoI don’t know about TikTok, I just know this post was submitted by someone with 50 karma originally pointing to a German radio station news site, in German. It was only changed to the Guardian later, perhaps by a mod.
- defrost 4y agoLink to English article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/16/huge-cylindrical-aquarium-housing-1500-exotic-fish-bursts-in-berlin https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/16/huge-cylindric... > A freestanding cylindrical aquarium housing about 1,500 exotic fish has burst in Berlin, causing a wave of devastation in and around the Sea Life tourist attraction, police have said. > Glass and other debris were swept out of the DomAquarée complex, which houses a Radisson hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants, as 1m litres of water poured out of the 14-metre-high tank shortly before 6am. > Operators say the aquarium has the biggest cylindrical tank in the world that contained 1,500 tropical fish of 80 different species before the incident. > The aquarium, which was last upgraded in 2020, is a big tourist attraction in Berlin. A 10-minute elevator ride through the tank was one of the highlights of the attraction.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> 14-metre-high tank > 10-minute elevator ride through the tank That's 1.4 meters per minute, or ~2.3 centimeters per second. The aquarium and the fish in it must have been marvelous to watch, because otherwise even imagining being stuck in an elevator moving at this pace feels terrifyingly boring to think about.
- slickrick216 4y agoYeah it was quite nice. They’d feed the fish too and they’d all scramble for it.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoIt's a tourist attraction as part of the aquarium, not a tool to get from A to B; the hotel had its own regular elevator.
- ceejayoz 4y agoYou've never sat on a bench for 10 minutes to look at something neat? They move even slower.
- Ekaros 4y agoThat is lot of water. A thousand tonnes. It could do lot worse.
- userbinator 4y agoImagining a 10m cube gives a good idea of the amount.
- WhackyIdeas 4y agoThose fish must have taken a battering
- jacquesm 4y agoAny fish that got flushed out will be lost, they need things to be 'just so'. I once helped clean up at a friends place who had 30 aquariums with thousands of fish after the power went out longer than his UPS could provide it. The mess was sickening. He never had another tank after that and it was his life's passion.
- hardlianotion 4y agoIt feels in this case that a lot of fish were killed for no reason at all. I am surprised at how much this annoys me.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoInteresting to think about. On the one hand, it's no different than any of the random stuff that happens to fish in the wild, or wildlife in general. Being killed for no reason at all is the default in nature; humans build societies and civilizations and develop technologies in large part to avoid it. On the other hand, this feels especially sad for some reason.
- WhackyIdeas 4y agoWe have an industrial unit which has a mice problem. Every time I go to B&Q (home hardware store for non-UK folk) with the intention of buying mice traps, I just can’t push the button. These mice are destroying our stock, but I just cannot do it. I would be a terrible fisherman.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> I would be a terrible fisherman. To be fair, you have to catch and release most fish in the UK which, whilst annoying for the fish, doesn't seem to do them much harm since there's e.g. a whole bunch of 30y+ old carp that keep getting caught. You're allowed to keep a certain set of game and sea fish if they're big enough and from the appropriate place.
- durnygbur 4y agoNow radisson will have to discount the room prices, once main attraction is gone...
- chasd00 4y agoI bet it stinks for months too
- robotnikman 4y agoI can only imagine the smell. I remember once having a small aquarium as a kid and it had that 'fishy' smell to it. The whole place must smell like that now.
- MengerSponge 4y agoIf you're curious about the design considerations and construction techniques for large aquaria, the standard reference is Stachiw's Handbook of Acrylics for Submersibles, Hyperbaric Chambers, and Aquaria: https://www.bestpub.com/books/product/cid-151.html https://www.bestpub.com/books/product/cid-151.html Plastics are weird, and examining the wreckage will give a lot of information about the failure mode.
- jacquesm 4y agoA column of water that tall is nothing to mess around with. Even the smallest imperfection in the base materials can become a problem.
- MengerSponge 4y ago170.65 kPa, or 24.75 psi. I imagine even Flex Tape can't hold that!
- boppo1 4y agoDoesn't seem crazy, my tires hold 38 psi.
- bombcar 4y agoPSI is a measurement that can be hard to translate between various items like tires and tanks and foundations: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/building-foundations-load-d_1791.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/building-foundations-load... Massive tractor tires can be 50+ psi and when they pop it is devastating.
- aliqot 4y agoIn contrast, my bicycle tires at are 130psi, and while loud, the explosion is minor. I think the amount of air/water/matter escaping is part of the equation, but someone more physics-inclined could probably ascertain to a better degree how this affects the outcome.
- artemonster 4y agoHow do they make such a huge cylinder?
- jacquesm 4y agoTake a large sheet of acrylic, warm it, bend it by warming it and applying pressure. If the circumference is large take multiple ones. Glue ends together, glue in base plug.
- feb 4y agoAccording to a german news report [1], it could be due to material fatigue. [1] https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2022/12/berlin-karl-liebknecht-strasse-aquarium-feuerwehr-polizei-einsatz.html https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2022/12/berlin-karl-li...
- usrusr 4y agoIf it's due to material fatigue it's due to engineering failure. That in turn may or may not be due to the yes-men promotion mechanism.
- Eduard 4y ago> yes-men promotion mechanism huh?
- donkeyd 4y agoPeople who say yes without questioning their superiors or clients tend to get promoted. This is what I assume they mean.
- PurpleRamen 4y agoThe tank was around 20 Years old. How is material fatigue an engineering failure at that age?
- bombcar 4y agoIf the engineers didn't know it would fail in 20 years from material fatigue, that's something that should be learned. They may be blameless by any reasonable standard, but knowing how/when something will reach end of life is an important part of design. We learned a similar lesson with airplanes.
- jacquesm 4y ago20 years is a very long time for a structure under such extreme stress. You can bet that this accident will influence all such designs and cause a structural review of every other large tank made of acrylic in the world, as well as various under water tunnels in large aquaria.
- anenefan 4y agoThat's a real shame only a few fish survived. It's fortunate only two people hurt. That looks nasty from the picture. Maybe next time less brittle acrylic. Off the top of my head a 14 m high tower of water - there would have been approx 20 psi at the bottom of the tank.
- gambiting 4y agoJust fyi - acrylic is actually less brittle than glass.
- someweirdperson 4y agoThe proper matetial to use is transparent aluminium [0] though. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=90eg_erObDo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=90eg_erObDo
- anenefan 4y agoTo be clear ... less brittle acrylic isn't glass.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> there would have been approx 20 psi at the bottom of the tank. [1] agrees with you at 19.9psi [1] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrostatic-pressure-water-d_1632.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrostatic-pressure-wate...
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoWow, what a shock! I stayed here in 2017 and often looked up at the aquarium whilst having a coffee or beer in the foyer.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI've stayed there as well for two nights a few years ago, it was a great attraction. Really, really large too - a million liters of water, five stories tall or higher, I don't even remember.
- rob74 4y agoConsidering there was a hotel lobby under the aquarium, it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt. Too bad for the fish though. Also, there's a sentiment of "how could this happen, it was only upgraded two years ago?!" in all the articles I have read so far - maybe it happened precisely because of that? But let's see what the investigation will reveal...
- tazjin 4y ago> it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt It probably helped that it happened at 6AM ...
- Reason077 4y agoYes, it could have been much worse if it had happened at, say, 6PM. Although some hotel lobbies can start to get busy even at that hour (airport hotels, etc).
- petodo 4y agoeven earlier, 5:30-5:45 actually reported by guests, 5:43 fire alarm after broken front glass preliminary cause - material fatigue
- pcan77 4y agoas someone who has an aquarium, i'm amazed it didn't happen in the middle of the night. Any time I've had an overflow issue or something, it's always in the middle of the night and my water sensor is blaring
- browningstreet 4y agoI’m renting a house with three bathrooms. Two of the three toilets, on separate occasions, spontaneously cracked and leaked water. Both happened between 5am and 6am-ish. I was awake for one and heard it, and woke up shortly after the other one happened and found my kitchen flooded. The cracks in the two toilet water tanks were identical. Given the comments about the water temp and lobby temps, I’m guessing that hour and temperature changes could be linked. I was able to get the owner of the house to see the wisdom of replacing the third toilet water tank.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoI've been there so many times, every time I went to Berlin, sad news. It looked pretty cool and was a good place to bring people who didn't know Berlin after a visit to the beautiful Pergamonmuseum, which is 5 minutes walk away. But I went on the elevator only the first time, it was clear that that wasn't a good idea at all.
- leftbit 4y agoIt's just weird learning about interesting engineering accomplishments by news that they're gone forever...
- bombcar 4y agoAgreed - it would be a interesting blog to report on these kind of things before they burst. I know of the aquariums with tubes under/through the water, but this seems to be something different.
- pvaldes 4y agoWater pressure is very high over 60cm tall for a standard glass panel. This is the reason to not have really big home aquariums for hobbyists in the market, unless you build it directly. They grow in surface instead to be taller
- telesilla 4y agoI had no idea this existed - all those visits to Berlin, wasted. Looks like it was a remarkable elevator ride. https://youtu.be/aM6niCCtOII https://youtu.be/aM6niCCtOII
- G3rn0ti 4y agoI can confirm it was a great place to visit. I went there 2018 even as a Berlin native. The highlight of the tour was taking the elevator into that water dome. Impressive stuff. Too sad it’s destroyed - hope insurance will cover all the damage. I wouldn’t want to switch places with the owner currently…
- wwarner 4y agoThanks for the video link. You can see a seam in the tank as the lift rises.
- SuperFine 4y agoHow come there's no footage?
- williamscales 4y agoI think it could take a little while to come out, but I'm sure they had cameras in the lobby. It did just happen this morning after all. The building's structural integrity is being checked.
- bombcar 4y agoExactly - the security cam footage takes a few days to be released if the company wants it, or a few weeks to leak quietly if they don't. At 6 AM you're not going to have many people standing around with cell phone cams for it (and anyone around when the giant tank starts making horrible noises would be hopefully smart enough to run for higher ground).
- halotrope 4y agoSo Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
- robaato 4y agoFor some reason "A Fish Called Wanda" comes to mind! Or maybe that should be "Fish go Wandering"?!
- NoboruWataya 4y agoThis is crazy. I've been there a few times as the hotel is a popular spot for conferences (likely in part because of the attraction of the aquarium - I wonder if it will continue to be so popular a venue now). The aquarium was absolutely huge, I can't imagine what it must have been like seeing it burst. Sadly I never availed of the elevator ride through the aquarium.
- lqet 4y agoThere are now many reports about material fatigue as the primary cause, but I am not so sure. Another article [0] mentioned that the building is currently analyzed by engineers because the firemen found cracks in floors and walls - they are, however, not sure if these cracks were caused by the water, or if they were already there before. In the latter case, something could be wrong with the building's foundations. I am no expert, but if such a massive aquarium is only slightly tilted to one side, I would expect the forces acting on the glass to be ill-distributed. Material fatigue would then only be a secondary cause. [0] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/ungluecke/aquarium-in-berlin-geplatzt-bild-der-verwuestung-18539413.html https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/ungluecke/aquarium-...
- abduhl 4y agoWhy would you expect the forces acting on the glass to be ill-distributed if the enclosure were tilted slightly? Water pressure acts hydrostatically. The enclosure appears to have a circular cross section. As long as the tilt is not severe there is no reason to believe anything other than tensile hoop stresses due to equal circumferential loading will develop.
- a4a4a4a4 4y agoThe normal force of the tank wall to the floor will shear across the acrylic if it's not perfectly flat. Pressure outwards is normal to the tank wall relative to the water, but if this force goes diagonally through the floor, that's bad.
- abduhl 4y agoIf the tank burst due to it shearing off of its base then it is not the glass that has the problem; it’s the connection to the base. This might sound pedantic but the OP said the forces on the GLASS were ill-distributed. The most important part of after the fact disaster analysis from an engineering context is being excruciatingly specific about the performance of structural elements.
- barbegal 4y agoFrom an engineering perspective these sorts of acrylic tanks are a nightmare to ensure they are safe. The seams are impossible to inspect rigorously so the only real way of checking that they are safe is to load them with an excess pressure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_test ). This can't be done with a tank of this size so the engineers can only real fall back on giving the tank excessive safety margins. But those safety margins cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a tank this big so maybe they were reduced. All it takes is one incorrect application of a seam bond and a small crack will form. The crack may take decades to propagate with no way of detecting it. When the seam opens up a bit the crack will then propagate the entire length of the seam extremely rapidly and the whole tank will fail. Ideally failures would be slow and predictable but this is impossible with acrylic. These sorts of failures have occurred before https://www.plasticstoday.com/materials/when-acrylic-aquariums-fail https://www.plasticstoday.com/materials/when-acrylic-aquariu... and will keep occurring as long as this type of construction is used.
- lqet 4y agoWould it be possible to construct a seamless acrylic tube, maybe on-site?
- barbegal 4y agoNot of this size. Certainly single pieces are used in other applications where safety is even more critical such as submersibles. But manufacturing a tube this big would be impossible.
- plastiquebeech 4y agoImpossible to manufacture? Or financially impossible to build a factory for the purpose and larger infrastructure to accommodate transportation? I'm curious if there is something about acrylics which makes it impossible to make very large single pieces.
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- philodelta 4y agoI know people got hurt (and fish died) but all I can think is, this is a hotel lobby, there most certainly IS security camera footage of the failure and subsequent deluge and man do I want to know what that looked like.
- jacquesm 4y agoThere likely will not be more than a few stills worth of interest, this happened very quickly judging by how far out the street is contaminated.
- Nextgrid 4y agoThere might be legal/liability reasons why they’re not releasing the footage immediately. Reminds me of the Champlain Towers accident - there were surveillance cameras everywhere, as well as a fire alarm control panel (that was critical to the incident as it would’ve been the one triggering an alarm to prompt everyone to evacuate) but no efforts were made to recover either despite the fire alarm panel checking in with the control centre several times (on battery power, over a mobile phone connection) after the collapse, proving that it was still alive and recoverable. I guess they worked out that it was better to play dumb and let this evidence go away than recover it and potentially get into more trouble. I suspect it’s the same situation with the aquarium.
- pvaldes 4y agoJust to add context we could be talking easily about more than $100,000 lost only in the fishes. The materials and pumps of the aquarium should be much worse. After the strange coup try in Germany the last week, I wouldn't discard still that is not another destabilization attempt by some hypothetical agent. Weren't cameras set around the Hotel hall?
- krisoft 4y ago> After the strange coup try in Germany the last week, I wouldn't discard still that is not another destabilization attempt by some hypothetical agent. How would that work? Is this site important enough to destabilize the country?
- pvaldes 4y agoOnly two people injured after a million liter water wave was a miracle. Could have been much worse. But I'm probably just hypothesizing too much [again] while trying to analyze the case. It just feels strange coupled with the last long chain of strange events happening right now. To be fair, twenty years are a lot of time for an acrylic tank.
- pvaldes 4y agoAndreas Tanschus interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXfuLEAEEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXfuLEAEEs
- MKais 4y agoDaily horoscope - Pisces: A difficult day despite the expansion of your living space - Scorpio: ...
- fwungy 4y agoThe root cause of this was that the hotel was forced to lower their heat due to energy sanctions. Reduced heat caused the aquarium to contract which contorted the structure, eventually causing the failure.
- joezydeco 4y agoCitation? You're also ignoring the thermal mass and physical pressure of a million liters of water.
- mikeyouse 4y agoThey're pulling that "info" from the conspiracy theorist website zero hedge.. that it conveniently aligns with that site's support of Putinist Russia should be noted. The German law limits public space heating to 67º which doesn't seem like it should be nearly enough to cause this kind of failure..
- joezydeco 4y agoI would also think that 1,500 tropical fish need the water to be maintained at a certain temperature to keep them alive. If anything, the water tank was heating the room instead of vice versa.
- fwungy 4y agoThe issue was caused by the forced reduction in heating due to energy sanctions. The decreased warmth of the lobby caused the aquarium, which was sensitive due to its size and construction, to contract and contort to the point of structural failure.
- krisoft 4y agoDo you have a source on that?
- fwungy 4y agoToo early for an official RCA, but the surrounding facts of the known temperature sensitivity of the aquarium, the energy reduction mandates in Berlin, and the unusual cold point to that as the most likely cause. This poster on Zerohedge provides more details: I am directly involved in the legal cleanup of this and can provide a little more detail as to what actually happened (Tyler, reach out to me you have my email if you'd like to verify my identity here). The city of Berlin required the hotel reduce the ambient temperature of the hotel lobby to save on energy due to sanctions. Its been abnormally cold in Berlin the past few nights dipping down to -11°C last night and -12°C the night before that. The water is heated to a constant temperature above 30°C for many of the fish species that lived in the tank. As the nights got colder and colder, the lower ambient temperature of the air surrounding the tank likely started causing deformations and hairline cracks in the bottom of the tank where the pressure is the greatest. Last night at -11° caused the ambient temperature to drop too low given the reduced heating in the lobby and is what it looks like caused the "sudden unintentional disassembly"/catastrophic failure of the tank. Everyone is already lawyering up including the city, the HVAC manufacturer, tank manufacturer, HVAC installer, building engineer, hotel - the litigation is going to be fun to watch and work on. What isn't covered in the news is damage. The tank in 2003 cost €13 million. Today its orders of magnitude more expensive to replace, some of the fish were quite exotic and are expensive losses in and of themselves. Then you have the damage to the hotel lobby and façade, electrical components of the building in the three-story basement are also effected and large amounts of water went into the parking garage where many vehicles are parked not only from the hotel and offices but from an attached apartment complex to the hotel. Losses are tens of millions. All because the city made the hotel turn down the heat.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoCollateral damage from the launch of Cameron's Avatar 2.
- SergeAx 4y agoI stayed at the hotel this September. My first thought was "oh, my, there is a breakfast area right there on a ground floor, and it is starts buzzing right from 6am!”. Fortunately, the bang happened 20 mins before. Interestingly, looking at the tank from my room, I never thought about the scenario when it breaks. I thought "engineers must put a lot of extra margin when constructing this". Turned out I was wrong.
- bmc7505 4y agoI stayed at the Radisson in 2019 for ICFP and was astounded at the poor quality of the building, which was undergoing renovations at the time. I distinctly remember noticing visible corrosion around the foundation of the tank structure.
- smm11 4y agoThis sounds like the plot of a John Irving novel.
- honeybadger1 4y agoHorrible
- bayesian_horse 4y agoThey found Nemo... everywhere...
- todd8 4y agoFrom the article: “None of the animals inside the saltwater aquarium, which contained clownfish, teira batfish and palette surgeonfish, survived.” :(