The Enschede Fireworks Incident | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
"On the 13th of May, 2000, residents in the Dutch city of Enschede noticed smoke in the sky. A small industrial complex in the northern part of the city was on fire..."
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MUSIC:
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#Documentary #History #TrueStories
As always, THANK YOU to all my Patreon patrons: you make this channel possible.
https://www.patreon.com/fascinatinghorror
SOCIAL MEDIA:
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueHorrorTales
► TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatinghorror
► Suggestions: hello@fascinatinghorror.co.uk
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
► "Emotional Aftermath" by Doug Maxwell/Media Right Productions
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the 13th of May, 2000, residents in the Dutch city of Enschede noticed smoke in
00:18the sky. A small industrial complex in the northern part of the city was on
00:23fire. Fire engines made their way towards the blaze while people watched from a
00:29safe distance, fully expecting to see it brought under control within a few
00:33hours. Instead, at around 3.30 p.m. a massive explosion shook the entire city,
00:40obliterating a whole neighborhood in a matter of moments.
00:46SE Fireworks was founded in 1977. At that time it was a relatively small company
00:54which manufactured its own fireworks for sale to the public. The site was well
00:59managed and the workers extremely safety-conscious, something which
01:03resulted in there being no major incidents at all for many years. This
01:09excellent safety record, coupled with a range of high-quality products, allowed
01:14SE Fireworks to grow swiftly, and it was soon providing pyrotechnics for annual
01:19festivals throughout the Netherlands as well as for high-profile concerts by
01:23artists including Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi. Of course, this success meant
01:29that their business model had to change. It was no longer practical to make their
01:34fireworks themselves. Instead they started importing them from abroad. The
01:39site became primarily a fireworks storage depot rather than a fireworks
01:44factory, although some work was still done on site to customize fireworks to
01:49meet the particular needs of clients. This shift in focus allowed SE Fireworks
01:56to take on more clients and expand their business still further, to the point that
02:01capacity became a bit of a problem. The site at Ensrede consisted of a few
02:06workshops and numerous concrete bunkers where fireworks could be stored. In 1977
02:12there was capacity enough for 18,000 kilograms, or 18 tons, of fireworks, but
02:19by the late 1990s SE Fireworks were packing ten times that amount of
02:24explosive material into the same space. To alleviate the storage problem a few
02:30new bunkers were installed and SE Fireworks was granted permission to
02:34bring in some shipping containers. These were a temporary solution, of course.
02:38They'd eventually have to move to a bigger site, but for the time being the
02:43shipping containers provided ample space for their excess stock. Especially since,
02:48in addition to the containers they'd been granted permission for, SE Fireworks
02:53quietly added several extra ones too. The end result was a site that was packed
03:00with explosives... way more than it had been designed for, and way more than
03:04anyone outside of SE Fireworks would ever reasonably suspect. To make matters
03:10worse, while SE Fireworks had been growing as a company, Ensrede had been
03:15growing as a city. The SE Fireworks site had, when first built, been surrounded by
03:21nothing but trees and fields. Gradually, over the course of the 1980s and 1990s,
03:28this empty space was filled with new housing until SE Fireworks found itself
03:33surrounded by residential neighborhoods. Some houses stood directly adjacent to
03:39the depot. Few people fully appreciated the danger inherent in this. When one
03:46resident complained the City Council of Ensrede fobbed them off, explaining that
03:51the land on which SE Fireworks was built was clearly zoned for industrial use. As
03:57far as they were concerned the fact that the zoning was technically correct meant
04:02that there was no issue to be addressed. The definitive cause of the fire has
04:08never been determined, but it may have been down to a short-circuit or
04:12electrical fault in a piece of equipment in Workshop C2. It was a Saturday, and
04:18according to normal rules of operation this workshop should have been clean and
04:23empty. It wasn't. In fact it was packed with hundreds of fireworks, some of them
04:30stored in open containers or lying out on workbenches. The fire ignited these
04:37fireworks, causing them to shoot off from the burning building and set fire to
04:41other structures on the site. By the time the fire service arrived on scene the
04:47blaze was already well established. Noting that there were explosives on
04:52site the fire service set up a cordon, but it was a cordon based on an
04:57incorrect assessment of how much explosive material was present. They had
05:02no idea to what an extensive degree SE Fireworks had been overfilling their
05:07available storage space. By 3.30 p.m. the fire had spread to and penetrated the
05:15bunkers where the majority of the fireworks were stored. One bunker
05:19detonated, setting off a chain reaction that seconds later caused the others to
05:24explode too. Flames and shockwaves rippled through the surrounding
05:29neighborhood. Onlookers were thrown to the ground, glass shattered, buildings
05:35collapsed, and several of the firefighters on scene were killed almost
05:39instantly. Following the explosion more resources were brought in to fight the
05:45flames, including several engines from Germany who crossed the border to help.
05:50By the end of the day the fire was under control, but it was too late for
05:55many of those affected. 22 people were killed in the explosion, including four
06:00firefighters. Nearly 1,000 people sustained injuries requiring treatment,
06:06and the neighborhood which surrounded the site was almost completely destroyed.
06:11Buildings that weren't flattened were damaged to the point of structural
06:15instability and had to be demolished, leaving thousands of people without
06:20homes. An investigation was undertaken but couldn't determine the initial cause
06:27of the fire, as the site of the disaster was comprehensively destroyed. It was
06:34revealed, though, that SE Fireworks had violated numerous safety rules. The doors
06:40of shipping containers had been left open. Unapproved fireworks had been
06:45stored on site. No separation distance had been maintained between containers,
06:49and those extra shipping containers had been added to the site without
06:54permission. And yet, despite all of this, the site had passed a safety audit just
07:00a few weeks before the disaster. How could this be possible? In the end it was
07:06concluded that local authorities, national authorities, and the operators
07:11of SE Fireworks were all to share some of the blame. On a national level
07:17departments which might have intervened before an explosion could take place had
07:22been stripped back, underfunded, or reorganized to the point that nobody was
07:27entirely sure whose responsibility it was to deal with issues like unsafe
07:32industrial installations. Was it down to the Environmental Investigation Bureau,
07:37or the Dutch Ministry of Housing? Or was it perhaps the purview of the Hazardous
07:43Materials Inspection Agency, just one of several branches of government that had
07:49been eliminated in the 1990s? Local authorities at the same time were
07:55criticized for their complacency. Inspections had been cursory, with
08:00inspectors routinely not issuing fines even when they did see a breach of
08:04protocol. It was perhaps a case of reduced hazard awareness. SE Fireworks
08:11had never seen a serious incident until the explosion. After two whole decades of
08:17operating safely it might have seemed to inspectors to be not that important to
08:22stick rigidly to every single rule. Exceptions could be made for a business
08:27which had proven itself with such a good safety record. Finally, the operators of
08:34SE Fireworks were guilty of the same complacency. The company had started out
08:39with an acute awareness of the need to operate safely... but time had passed, the
08:45business had grown, no serious accidents had taken place, and little by little it
08:51had started to seem less and less important to adhere as closely to the
08:56rules as they used to. If they had been at all concerned about how close they
09:01were to a residential area, that concern had been tempered by the perception that
09:06an accident was vanishingly unlikely. All had been well for more than two decades,
09:12so why should they worry about something going wrong now? In the end, though there
09:19was much criticism of all parties involved, few people faced any real
09:24consequences. Two of the owners of SE Fireworks were given small fines and
09:30short prison sentences... so short, in fact, that they were easily covered by the time
09:36that they'd already spent in custody awaiting trial. Meanwhile the Dutch
09:41government undertook a huge program of reform focused on the handling of
09:45fireworks. A national catalog of every warehouse storing fireworks was created,
09:50and, along with several other measures, clearly defined safety distances were set.
09:56Any installation holding fireworks for sale to the public would need to be 30
10:01meters, or 98 feet, away from any other building, and any installation storing
10:07fireworks for sale to business customers would need to be isolated by 800 meters,
10:12or 2,600 feet, from any other significant structure. This requirement meant that
10:19more than half of fireworks storage facilities in the Netherlands were
10:23closed or moved, a massive undertaking that would never have happened were it
10:27not for the explosion which devastated Enschede. Though it came at a terrible
10:33cost, tens of thousands of people in the Netherlands now live and work in places
10:38that are no longer at risk of being destroyed in a similar explosion.