![]() ![]() In 2005, a survey was published based on the electronic medical records of general practitioners, which compared 9,329 victims with a control sample size of 7,329 units ranging from 16 months before to 2.5 years after the disaster. It was later demolished and closed a replacement opened nearby in Boekelo in 2004. ![]() The fire spread to the nearby Grolsch Beer brewery which had an asbestos roof. The Dutch Government warned that potentially harmful asbestos was released into the air by the explosion. Ten thousand residents were evacuated, and damages eventually neared 1 billion guilders (€454 million). This caused around 400 houses to be destroyed, 15 streets incinerated and a total of 1,500 homes damaged, leaving 1,250 people homeless, essentially obliterating the neighbourhood of Roombeek. Fireworks factory was the only one in the Netherlands to be located in a residential area. Damage Ī 40-hectare (100-acre 0.4 km 2) area around the warehouse was destroyed by the blast. They acted "completely incomprehensibly" by allowing the company to expand, for fear that the city would have to pay the cost of moving S.E. Later in the court case, the judge said that city officials failed to take steps even when they knew laws had been broken. Residents and town councillors stated they did not even know that there was a fireworks warehouse in their area. When it was built in 1977, the warehouse was outside the town, but as new residential areas were built it became surrounded by low-income housing. However, after the explosion, residents from the affected district of Roombeek-a poor, working-class neighbourhood-complained of government inaction and lack of interest, saying the whole disaster was just waiting to happen. The company was judged to have met all official safety regulations while the legally imported fireworks had been inspected by Dutch authorities and deemed safe. ![]() One week prior to the explosion, SE had been audited. However, the illegal use of shipping containers reduced safety, particularly as they had been arranged closely together at ground level and had not been separated either by earthworks or other partitioning. Theoretically, an explosion was considered highly unlikely because the fireworks were stored in sealed bunkers specifically designed to minimize such risk. One theory to explain the large scale of the disaster was that internal fire doors in the central complex-which might otherwise have contained the fire-had been left open. When 177 tonnes (174 long tons 195 short tons) of fireworks exploded, it destroyed the surrounding residential area. It then spread outside the building to two full shipping containers that were being used to illegally store more display incendiaries. Fireworks depot, in a work area where some 900 kg (2,000 lb) of fireworks were stored. The fire which triggered the explosion is believed to have started inside the central building of the S.E. ![]()
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