Wednesday, April 2
Firefighters called out ot Aquarium hotel reopening event
If you were living in Berlin on December 16, 2022, chances are you’ll remember what happened. At approximately 5:45 am, the enormous indoor tank of Sea Life Berlin – the largest cylindrical aquarium in the world, housed in the Radisson Collection Hotel on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße – cracked open. More than one million litres of water flooded the hotel lobby, and 1,500 sea creatures, including rays and cat sharks, perished, gasping for air on the floor.
It was a huge disaster, but also, a stroke of luck: it happened so early in the morning, no one was seriously hurt. This was an engineering catastrophe for which (it was later revealed) there had been warning signs years before. Understandably, given the scale of the incident, the hotel decided against reinstalling a fish tank, opting instead for a giant vertical garden.
You might think, then, that the hotel would be extremely careful about its grand reopening. It had certainly secured a prominent guest: former mayor Franziska Giffey was set to give a speech on Tuesday night. In fact, she was only a few lines into her remarks when the alarms went off.
“Attention, please, this is the hotel management. Due to an emergency, for your own safety, we ask you to leave the hotel immediately,” began an announcement over the public address system, followed by versions in English and Spanish. Firefighters then entered the hall, interrupting the party.
As it turned out, the incident was minor: the warning system had likely been triggered by smoke from fog machines. Nevertheless, it is hard to ignore feeling that there is an air of misfortune surrounding the Radisson Collection Hotel in Mitte.
