The Enschede Fireworks Factory Disaster 2000 (Documentary)
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- The in-depth story of the Enschede Fireworks Factory Explosion Disaster
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in May 2000, the residents of Roombeek are gathered in the streets, wondering where the cloud of black smoke is coming from. They seem surprised to hear there’s some sort of production facility right around the corner. Little do they know that living standards in the neighborhood had been so low that a fireworks factory was allowed to operate nearby...
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The SE Fireworks factory was built before the town that surrounds it, that is why it was allowed to operate, not because of poor living standards. Also the residents were well aware that it was a fireworks depot, hell some even complained about it, but do to the fact the building grandfathered the town itself, and the fact that SE had a perfect safety record, it was brushed off.
Yeah I follow this channel for a while now but he makes some pretty big mistakes here...
Yeah, weird that none of them seemed to care enough NOT to purchase their home.
We have that here in northern Colorado with oil and gas. People, and the law, demand that new oil and gas wells must be X amount of feet away from the development. However, there are zero laws addressing the flip side; developers can build all they want as near to those same wells as they feel like.
People have sued oil companies for everything from noise complaints and high traffic of employees to just because they hate oil companies. They don't seem to ever go after the companies that built the houses that close to a pad nor did they seem to care enough to look elsewhere for a home.
It's also reminiscent of the idiots here in the US that live in hurricane alley. They KNOW the danger, they choose to live there then they cry, piss and moan for government handouts when they inevitably lose their home to hurricane after hurricane.
People are stupid.
I doubt that many of the residents of Roombeek owned their own homes. A poorer neighbourhood like this in The Netherlands would be predominantly social housing.
Everyone in this video was dumb as hell. It blows my mind (excuse the pun).
@@TheNuckinFoob Know what's almost as stupid as living where you know your home has a high chance of hurricane damage? Building a neighborhood near a race track that's been there for decades. Move in, build up, and shit on everyone's fun with noise complaints. Cretins...
0:41 As a firefighter, nothing brings the neighborhood out quite like a working fire. If you’ve never met your neighbors, light someone’s house on fire and you’ll meet everyone in the neighborhood.
Literally the only way I meet my neighbors 😂 Once was a flood another time was downed power lines.
in that neighbourhood there was a fire about every other month and we would always meet the neighbours on the street and watch shit burn down and barely make room for y'all to fight the fire.
Can confirm. When a scrapyard that also contained gas bottles went up, we all went to view the fire from a viewpoint near where I live.
This is true. I remember there being a shed on fire close to me about a year ago, and there was someone from about every house in the neighbourhood looking at what was going on.
Though I gotta say, any kind of emergency vehicle that arrives with sirens on or arrives with multiple other emergency vehicles will get out the entire neighbourhood. Once happened in my street when someone didn't open the door and the cops had to break a window in order to see what happened. The man had fallen and couldn't get up.
His daughter had come to his house but couldn't open the door because it was on a hook on the inside. From as far as I know, he moved somewhere else shortly after, he's ok now tho
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣sooooo true
I was a teen, living in the neighbouring town of Hengelo. Even we heard the huge bang of the explosion. We saw the black smoke too and first thought an old factory in the neighbourhood behind us was on fire. It was shocking to hear it was actually all the way in Enschede. Luckily noone I knew was injured.
Ja zelfde hier, ik zag het vanuit Borne tijdens een verjaardag buiten. Blijft pijnlijk om beelden hierover te zien. Ik raad je aan om een tour te nemen in Roombeek (mocht je nog in de buurt wonen). Best wel interessant om daar te lopen en verhalen te horen erover, dan terrasje pakken bij de oude markt :)
Ik was in Zevenaar, ruim 60 kilometer verderop, ook wij konden de knal horen en zagen de rookwolken...
It was visible from Rijssen as well, 35 km away. Initial reports were a fire in a plastic garden furniture factory, due to the large amount of black smoke.
Did they not have safety regulations over there? Saying you cant store large amount of explosive material in residential areas? Seems like common sense.
@@scorch4299 it's mentioned in the documentary...
It's very weird that Google Earth has scrubbed any evidence of the old building. It goes from 2008 to 1985, nothing in between.
There are foto's taken from a plane only hours before, just not on Google maps as that wasn't a thing back then
I work for a fireworks company here in Australia. We have huge safety zones around any storage facility. There is no way we would allow this kind of facility anywhere near a residential area.
The factory was there before the residential area, nothing bad ever happened until that day, now we've strict laws for these kind of things
@@samnfg yeah. I know one of our depots is going to at risk in years to come because they will want to develop closer to us. The problem is the family owned business has been there for generations and owned the property for close to 100 years. They're not going to sell it which will cause problems because we have numerous magazines full of fireworks of different classes meaning they wouldn't be allowed to build homes within about a kilometre of us in any direction.
You also have shit ton of space. Not the case in Netherlands
Is that the property just off Windsor Rd in Sydney's north-west?
@@stevie-ray2020 no, I'm talking about one of ours in Queensland but I suspect they'd be in a similar situation. We have depots in Northern NSW and Queensland
As others have stated, that facility was there long before the homes and there should have been a stand off distance in place.
This does not apply merely to fireworks or explosive MFG facilities, it applies to grain silos, flour and sugar mills, wood and coal processing facilities, gas and fuel facilities just to name others.
Building a home or worse a community directly adjacent to these facilities will at some point end in disaster. Always.
you are absolutely right, this should never have been set up this way. The part that disgusts me is how the politicians let this happen, didnt tell us that lived there, and when it went to shit they tried to blame everyone else instead of owning up to their bs.
That is not true it was an old textile factory. and the houses where older than 80 years some idiot gave permits to SE fire works to opperate there but all buildings and houses wher there long before.
Area was build around 1890, so the houses were there long before the factory. It was allowed there as nobody believed consumers fireworks could act like mass explosives.
Like the Bhopal Dow plant, which was gradually surrounded by a slum until shit went sideways.
Roombeek was NOT an upper class neighbourhood at the time, it was a lower class neighbourhood of mostly small houses for factory workers.
I lived in the neighbourhood until moving away for a new job in another city 3 years before the disaster.
It was a nice enough place to live, friendly people, small shops, and literally under the smoke of the Grolsch brewery.
Main problem we had living there was substandard road maintenance causing large potholes caused by the ever larger trucks serving the brewery.
The house I used to live in is just 1-2 houses outside the damage radius...
He said, a less up market part of town and working class families lived there.
That's not upper class rather quite the opposite.
stroinksbleekweg woonde ik. Alles goed? :)
@@NDahlonline woonde aan de Voortsweg, boven wat toen een bakkerswinkel was.
My sister worked in a fireworks factory but she was never concerned. The building were all separated by berms and had interlocking entrances and the safety of the actual explosives was amazing. Very different from what we saw here.
The problem was with SE Fireworks that every organization. The national government. The provincial. The municipality. The company. All had their mistakes. There was more fireworks containers then allowed, there were also heavier fireworks then allowed.
The province didn't check regularly enough on safety. And the national government didn't have any law to prevent such atrocities
This documentary is a good English-spoken summary of the tragic events in Enschede. Thanks to the work of Paul van Buitenen and Jan Paalman a lot of details have surfaced. To understand why there was such a big cover-up, here is some background information.
=======
Culemborg:
Nine years before the disaster in Enschede, a fireworks company in the city of Culemborg blew up. There was an investigation, and tests were done. The conclusion was that light fireworks become highly explosive when tightly packed in a bunker or container. The government put these conclusions neatly in a filing cabinet, and did absolutely nothing else.
And that's how the firefighters in Enschede went in with a reckless plan of attack: They used water to extinguish the fire, and opened doors of bunkers and containers, to see if there was anything burning in there. The correct plan of attack would have been to evacuate, and use robotics to investigate the fire. One of the owners of the company, Bakker, tried to talk sense into the fire brigade commander, but the reply was: "I am the boss here!". In one of the videos, Bakker can be seen fleeing just before it all goes tragically wrong.
=======
Smallenbroek, Bakker & Enschede:
Smallenbroek was the old owner of SE Fireworks. Under his ownership, the company did not have the proper licenses and permits. Smallenbroek sold the company to employees Bakker and Pater, but he didn't sell the land. It would have been convenient for Smallenbroek if the company then went bankrupt. So he could sell the land for more money, and he could keep doing business with customers of the old company.
But the SE Fireworks did not go bankrupt, it actually grew. The new owner Bakker got the licenses and permits in good order, as far as the city of Enschede knew anything about fireworks, of course. Bakker also wanted to move the company to a plot outside of the city, far away from any population. However, the city of Enschede refused to facilitate this, imposing unreasonable requirements.
In the mean time, Enschede had a large scale restructuring of the neighborhood Roombeek on the agenda. That's why the land could only be sold to the city. Enschede offered less money for the land, because of the tenants. Smallenbroek wanted this extra money, so the sale of the land did not go through. Negotiations ended just a few days before the disaster.
=======
Smallenbroek was carefully kept out of the official investigation. The investigators were far too busy railroading an innocent and vulnerable man, using fabricated evidence. Two police inspectors who objected to this line of investigation were fired. Jan Paalman was one of them.
Yeah, I'm distantly related to Smallenbroek. Pretty sure my grandpa got all the doormat genes.
That's alot of text
But indeed very interesting, ty m8
Sounds like a speechbot and someone fed it text with errors.
@@michaelangeloh.5383 this video, you mean
I had already seen Fascinating Horrors video on this but honestly I enjoy when you both cover the same thing because often there’s different details (you cover a lot more personal stories and had actual footage of the event, but I like his takes that prove how important regulations are) I don’t understand why people complain why some channels “copy each other” when they really don’t, and it means Alma here gets more content. I’m not shocked that blast killed so many. And as someone studying tornados I’m not shocked people wanted to get a look,
Fascinating horrors was original and everyone is copying him. I don't mind that other people do it because I like the alternative perspectives and the different views of the event
This!! It's always so interesting to see the different angles and details from different creators, what they choose to include and how they present it. Plus, just because "I've seen it before" doesn't mean others aren't being introduced to it with this particular video.
It can also be a great litmus test when exploring a new creator; if you're already familiar with an event from multiple sources and find errors or aren't happy with the presentation, it's easy enough to move on. 💪🍍
aren't they the same folks? their channels link to eachother
@@cheepymcpeepy Not at all but it's easy to make that mistake. FH had been very supportive of this newer channel, both in personal consultations and with recommendations. It makes sense they would link each other. 👍🍍
@@OriginalPineapplesFoster oh that’s actually really cool! I hate when people get all competitive, they have a passion for this content and I’m glad they get the chance to put it into the world. I really do think that having these stores fresh in our minds makes us make better decisions. My motto is “humans are squishy, I think we need to remember that” both on a personal level but also when dealing with companies. Had to remind my bosses of basic safety so many times
I was 24 at the time and the Enschede Explosion is one of those events I can remember vividly where I was and what I was doing. We were driving home after a three week holiday in Corsica, near Namur in Belgium, we turned on the radio and we listened to the local news for the first time in three weeks.
The images we saw on TV later that day cured us of gaping at rescue workers till the end of our lives. Whenever we see blue lights flashing, we try to get away.
This reminds me of the Seest fireworks factory disaster in Denmark. I can hardly find any coverage of it, yet the existing footage is just incredible. Every firework was exploding at once - just a surreal scene. There were nuclear-level explosions that levelled the town. But only one person died, and the entire town was evacuated before anyone else was injured.
Same thing here the enschede explosion is the biggest recorded fireworks explosion ever and they were already evacuating before the big blast came had they not done that, then hundreds if not more then a thousand people could've died. As said here only the fire ball itself was already 135 meters wide the blast was even bigger and shattered windows over 20 kilometers away
I was in Enschede that day with friends, shortly before it happend. I was 17 or 18. We wanted to go swimming in the Aquadrome. But when we get there it was closed due small construction or something like that. We sat in the car for a while and then drove to Ochtrup in Germany to the public swimming pool. The explosion must have happend in the 20 minutes as we drove there. Cause when we got there everybody was looking at the sky and there was this huge dark cloud. I can remember being confused and worried cause we just came from there and we had no idea what happend. I'm at least once a week in Enschede, so it's really cool to see a documentary about it. Especially on a channel I always watch!
Do you consider yourself blessed?
I remember a very similar incident from 2004 here in Denmark. A fireworks factory went up in flames after two workers dropped a box of fireworks. Fortunately people were evacuated before the factory blew up. The only fatality was a firefighter, who lost his life in the first of three explosions. The whole thing was ruled an accident, but went to show that having dangerous materials near residential areas was a terrible idea. Unfortunately it seems mostly forgotten about nowadays.
That was Kolding, right?
Its on the show Destroyed In Seconds.
It also shows in the Destroyed in Seconds that the Kolding Fireworks factory had a permission for 1200 tons but they had been storing 800 tons of additional fireworks without permission.
Sad these explosions are still happening throughout the world today.
We all remember Kolding the area called Seest
The Safety Inspector (inspection a week before the event) should have been prosecuted. Was he corrupt, or just incompetent?
The owners got a slap on the wrist, despite killing 23 people.
The years leading up to the disaster the responsability of inspection was shifted from chemical,specially trained, engineers with the core task of inspecting hazardous matarials and companies to ordanairy cival servants. With no additional training. Many former inspectors warned the goverment.
@@vincentd.h.7280 Gotta love the neoliberal deregulation already back then. And the situation is a lot worse 20 years later.
…unbelievably pathetic. SO MANY SHOULD HAVE been living UNDER the prison. You honestly CAN’T prosecute someone OR a company TO THE DEGREE THIS WARRANTED.
@@vincentd.h.7280 Stupid move but even so that is no excuse. You do not need to be an engineer to recognize the lack of safety features. I have had courses in lab safety and it is not hard to learn.
@@mipmipmipmipmip _"Gotta love the neoliberal deregulation already back then."_
I hope you remember which parties ruled the country back then. You do understand Wim Kok was not a neo liberal?
My parents lived a good 90 km away from the city, but because the weather was so clear, they could see the huge plume of smoke coming from the horizon... 15 years later, I attended art school in that same neighborhood in a repurposed factory building just meters from where the blast had originated. Weird how life just moves on from these things....
my parents also lived nearby and i'd say its still talked about among the older people
I was 13 when it happened. I live in the western side of the Netherlands. I recall that the first news broadcasting talked about 'a big fire'. The details only came later in the evening. The pictures of the burned down houses and cars with melted bumpers were shocking. I think it was also the same night as the Euro Vision Songfestival, kind a weird that i remember that.
It's because eurovision got cancelled and they had to show the rerun the day after. I wasn't born back then but I've read that several times online 🤷🏼♀️
That explosion was intense! I cant imagine the fear in those people being so close!
The guy who filmed it, Danny, said he felt that he couldn't get away. He was hemmed in by a house row, and while the residents did let him in (and he was eventually literally blown through the doorway by the big kaboom at the end) he was still way too close and was in the smoke blackout.
Imagine that, way too close to an ever-escalating rolling explosion, transfixed, and then BOOM... and ash. Pompeii springs to mind.
Despite being told by law enforcement and firefighters to clear the area... The excitement of seeing something extraordinary tends to overcome common sense.
To a fault.
This disaster has been one where it became so freaking apparent that corruption is also a huge deal in the Netherlands.
Especially in local governments. Was a newspaper article recently about a town official who didn't want to give in to the mayor's corruption and got harassed, ended up on the tax department blacklist, etc. And considering a town's mayor is also head of police, it's a nasty mess.
Its a very human thing
I understand why you couldn't really dig deeper in the shadiness that went down there, but this rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than Bakker and the other dude.
This was gross negligence committed by the factory, city, municipality, province and state. And everybody from those compartments who had a stake in it knew it was there while everybody potentially threatening to stop the business would not know or would be made to forget, unalived or otherwise.
remember the guy that drove through the fences and said "Wat word hier verzwegen"
@@NDahlonline For those who don't speak Dutch, "verzwegen" means "kept quiet" but with the gravitas of "like the grave."
yeah, what the heck happened exactly? I‘m lost.
@@JoshSweetvale Dankie!
When i see stuff like this i think of all the pets left locked in at home while their owners curiously went to take a look then had to run for their lives. :'(
My uncle lost his house in this incident. He was out on the streets during the explosion. He returned to his house a few days later and found his cat alive under the debris. The cat lived to be 19 years old, passed away in 2016.
@@Beaumont6 Wow i'm happy to hear at least 1 happy story from the aftermath.
true story, my uncle had to leave his cats behind that day.
@@Beaumont6 Cats have 9 lives.
same and it never ceases to get me close to crying
I live in the Netherlands and can still remember this day.
Fireworks are one of my passions. And this disaster is so sad :(
Already seen a docu series about this multiple times. But still watching these ones.
Great video.
coverup makes sense, inspectors certifying them as 'not in violation ' prior to accident is the true dark side of this tale
Especially given there's European regulations (Seveso I and 2 back then) designed to prevent this kind of scenario to happen.
If the factory was there first, homes should never have been built there to begin with.
@@elizabethsohler6516 wrong factory should have been closed people are more important than fireworks!
I was a teen at the time, helping out my dad with baling hay on a warm saturday afternoon. The skies were clear but at one point we thought we saw a thunderstorm approaching low on the horizon. Later we found out that those black clouds actuallly were from the fireworks disaster 40km/25mi away!
What a gem of a channel-find this is. Been binging since i found it a few days ago. Keep it up!
This is more horrible than I even imagined when you started. Bless all who lost theirs lives and those who lost their homes and were injured.
I was surprised to hear only 23 people died ! judging from the aerial photo's the devastation looks absolutely complete, utter, total.
It was a beautiful sunny day and a lot of people were out and about. If it had happened at night it would've been much much worse.
@@Dutchabi63 well at least you'd still be able to see the victims as they all be on fire...
@@psycronizer I was surprised that there wasn’t more casualties as well.
@@MomentsInTradinghad it been in the night or without any evacuation orders then hundreds if not more then a thousand people would've died
Without the Dutch police and Firefighters. That number would be much higher.
A son of one of the men responsible for this disaster is now my co-worker, he was 9 year old when this happened. You can tell he's still very haunted by this as he recieved death threats on a daily basis, mostly aimed at his Dad.
Oh ja😂 wie dan. Voor zover ik weet is de oorzaak nooit achterhaald.
Dan lees je verkeerd vriend. Ik heb het niet over de oorzaak maar over een zoon van een van de mannen die voor de rechter heeft gestaan. Tevens woont ie niet meer in Enschede maar in Glanerbrug. Ik ga zijn naam hier niet posten ivm privacy, en het feit dat ie er nog half van getraumatiseerd is.
1:10 - Danny deVries' video is used erroneously here. These shots were taken after a significant explosion had already occurred, and Danny had retreated farther away from the fire. You can see that the building in the center is already damaged, with most of its roof tiles dislodged. He had taken refuge in a store, I think, when the second and far more terrible explosion happened.
Great video as always! I’ve never seen you make a video that was anything less than brilliant 🤩. One of my favourite channels.
Was in an above ground ammo storage building (think the size of two football fields) in Korea for the US Army. We were performing a 10% inventory of 155mm High Explosive Rocket Assist projectiles. South Korean soldiers dropped seven pallets of projectiles, six to a pallet or some 630 pounds of High Explosives onto the concrete floor. Everyone held their breaths for a second or two before exhaling.
I was unloading ammo in 29 palms and had a pallet of WP tip over when the 5k operator was pulling out some HE. The ammo wasn’t fused and is probably built to withstand drops like that but boooyyy did my butt pucker
My grandfather signed up in 1914 and miraculously survived - until the day after armistice when he was incorporated into the French countryside in an explosion at a large ordnance depot.
I wasn't born yet when this happened but I moved to Enschede a few years ago and studied in a building that's pretty much next to where the factory was and where the memorial is today. It's so surreal to me seeing how bad the destruction was compared to how nice the neighbourhood is nowadays. I'm happy that they've been able to rebuild but it's very sad thad something like this was able to happen, the authorities should have done more to prevent it. Great video as always though :)
I’ve been following your channel for a little over a month now and I was thinking if you would post any disaster in my country. Now I see this video of the Enschede fireworks accident, I live about 1.5 hours drive away from Enschede.. I can remember some things of what happend back then when it came on national television, but I was a child haha. I really love your videos they’re always on point, keep it up man!
All the best from the Netherlands 💪🏻(not Holland, that’s incorrect actually 😂)
I live 2 hours away and had totally forgotten about that incident
Firefighters arriving on scene from Gronau, Germany said that they well heard the explosion from the other side of the border.
Hi Jürgen
Not that strange, as Gronau is only some 10 kilimeters (6,25 miles) east of Enschede...
Das ist gut möglich weil Gronau nür etwa 10 Km ostlich von Enschede entfernt ist...
@@marcvanderwee Die Detonation entsprach ca. 1,5t TNT, glaube ich. Genug, um alles in einem Radius von 500m in Trümmer zu legen!
@@jurgenkuhlmann9194 Gutenmorgen Jürgen,
Das kann sein, so viel TNT entsprechung. Die Zerstörung im Viertel 'Roombeek' erzählte alles... Und weil die Detonation so stark war könnte man diese Detonation ziemlich weit herum hören. Auch in Gronau und andere Orte in der Gegend von Enschede.
@@marcvanderwee Die Zerstörungen in Roombeek waren absolut massiv, wie nach einem Luftangriff. Ein Wunder, dass es nicht noch viel mehr Opfer gegeben hat. So etwas ist für mich ein Paradebeispiel für Behördenversagen: es muss erst etwas passieren, bevor man tätig wird!
Das passiert leider überall - in den Niederlanden wie auch in Deutschland.
The owners got off with practically no punishment,people were killed large number seriously injured an entire neighborhood devastated and nobody is truly held responsible…..incredible!
And yet one of the owners Rudi bakker (the other owner died) is trying to clear his name 20 years after the disaster? Does that sound like someone who is really guilty? The arsonist also always said he didn’t do it (he also tried clearing his name until his death) and proof he wasn’t even in the area when it happened. There were military personnel on site removing suspicious stuff (like landmines or such) that multiple Independed witnesses saw.
I’m not the kind of guy that’s into conspiracy theories or anything but it is highly suspicious how a lot of things were swiped under the rug by the government/court house. It just doesn’t add up.
My neighbor blew his hand off with a firework a few weeks ago :(
These things are very dangerous; please stick to smaller ones such as fountains and sparklers.
I'm sorry to hear that. I visited Roombeek. My mom knew people that died in that explosion. The Vuurwerkramp would still have impact. We were never allowed to lit real heavy fireworks . Only small stuff
I remember back in 1996 in a small town on the Ohio River called Scotstown. Two15 year old boys had a man who had the body of a twenty-five-year-old but only the mind of a twelve-year-old after suffering a severe injury in a skateboarding accident when he was younger. They got him to go into the fireworks store and he dropped a lighted match on a pile of fireworks. The three of them scooted out the back door. They started the fire at the front entrance, before long the whole fireworks store was engulfed in flames. In order to escape it required people to run through a wall of fire. In the end nine people were killed. The guy with the mental impairment was arrested and eventually sentenced to a psychiatric hospital, he died a few years ago. But the two fifteen-year-olds were never charged.
I wish the worst death apon those fifteen-year-olds
That should be a video too
Holy shit not even for reckless endangerment or manslaughter involuntary x9 counts? RIP to those who died tho
Hold on, the "two 15 year olds were never charged" so how do you know what they did? I expected you to end the story with 'the guy with the mental disability told authorities what happened, and the 15 year olds were charge for their crimes...'
So how do we know what really happened if they weren't charged?
Wow
My parents lived in that city (on the other side). They went swimming with my sister and uncle that day. Suddenly there was a loud explosion. My uncles joked about "the bomb they made working well", having no idea of how serious it was...
I know of an incident even worse than this one when it comes to cover - up: sometime in the early 2000s a production / storage facility of Ammonium Nitrate in France called AZF (Azote de France) detonated, flattening the entire neighbourhood and killing and wounding countless people.
So far, no reports about the cause of the accident were issued by official investigators or the French Government.
Remember this vividly, I was sitting at a lake beach roughly 30-35km away on a nice summer day..I still could see the cloud rising on the horizon...
Coming from the Netherlands: it's still debatable if there were only fireworks or something more. The major destruction was insane and too big just for fireworks.
The Dutch government didn't release any statements regarding this matter. They tried to divert the attention to arresting an innocent man. Many to this day still believe it was a cover up where the government failed.
It was horrible too know the fire brigade gave a safety sign.. And it turned out it wasn't safe at all. Many people were too close, many people were wounded and way too many died (in which many children who were free from school on Saturdays).
Yeah, it does look like military ammunition was being stored there. That last blast was simply too powerful for a mere fireworks explosion, even if all the gunpowder were stored in the same place...
I also think there were military grade explosives there
More likely there was densely packed professional grade fireworks in closed containers not suited for the cause. That creates a massive bomb. The inspection just a week earlier should have closed the thing down, that is already one incentive why the city will do all they can to cover shit up.
@@mipmipmipmipmip no, in the Netherlands we don't need professional fireworks because we set off our own (consumer) fireworks. We don't have any professional fireworks hows in the Netherlands because we can use our own fireworks.
@@l.greentree3029 There are absolutely professional grade fireworks in the Netherlands. If you do a quick search, you can find multiple companies advertising their services for acquiring and legally using them. Yes, consumer grade fireworks exist, but that does not seem to be what S.E fireworks stored. They mainly supplied fireworks for concerts and large festivals.
Even though friends and families lost their loved ones, I was glad to hear those that suffered the most got to choose how to rebuild their homes.
"the most got to choose how to rebuild their homes." LOL you believe that?
The city has just been rebuilt and really not according to the wishes of the people how to rebuild their homes.
people weren't even allowed to go back after the explosion, people just drove through the fences with their cars to get their stuff back.
the handling was a complete chaos even years later, no one wanted the blame!
sorry to burst your bubble but only the upper class got nice treatment, the rest of us got shoved into shitty appartments around town with coupons and some used clothes and a uselessly low amount of money.
@@NDahlonline I remember there was a fundraiser on national TV which collected miilions of euros or dutch florins, dont remeber exactly what we had then, but I was told that NONE of you ever got any of it.
Are you kidding me? It took almost 8 years to rebuild that neighborhood (I was in Enschede an hour after the explosion and later on I even worked on the rebuilding of the neighborhood) and I would be surprised if even 1% of the old residents is living there when it was finished!
Like a lot of those “workers” neighborhoods in the east of the Netherlands it’s a tight community, with people living there all their lives. And after this they were displaced all over Enschede in shitty houses. I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all but a neighborhood this close to the city center, prime land. It didn’t hurt the city government at all that this happened. A neighborhood that’s now not possible to live in unless you have 2 working people with a upperclass fulltime job.
Lmao you must be JOKiNG.
"Clogs the street" I see what you did there! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I grew up on the German side, approx 20 kilometres away and I remember hearing the sirens and watching the smoke.
We had a barbecue that day and some neighbours could even hear explosions.
A perfect example of government using owners as scapegoats instead of taking the blame themselves. The full blame here lies with the government. There is no way that factory should have been allowed to remain there.
We had one similar accident here in my country, the Bright Sparkles disaster. It was nicknamed Hiroshima of Sungai Buloh for a reason. The accident became one of the driving factors that lead to the establishment of Occupational Safety and Health Act in my country three years later.
I live in hengelo about 11 km away from the factory, the blast was so intense that we could still feel it from that distance
Fascinating indeed thanks for the work you put into this one it shows
I feel like it's a miracle that so few people died in this explosion considering the scale of the damage and all the lookyloos who were out in the streets.
Because they were in the streets, meant they didn't get killed by the rubble from their houses....
They left out that the previous factory in this building was a Paper factory. firefighters probably respond differently to a paper factory fire then... explosives.
RTV oost (dutch local news station) has a LOT of info on this disaster.
I was 13 at the time, and born in the hospital mentioned in the video.
it's still weird being in that area now, 23 years later....
@@an_baby_orcaEverybody in the city knew there was a fireworks factory.
@@JoshSweetvale I lived 50m meters away from SE fireworks and i did not know. Had only been living there for 4 months and then lost everything.
@@irismelis Darn
Back in the old days of YT (pre-2010), I remember watching the raw video of this and being awe struck with that ultimate explosion! Pretty horrific accident.
nowaday we got so many big factory explosion that someone even make compilation of it
Same, I remember seeing this featured in the Discovery Channel show _Destroyed In Seconds_ back in 2010, then I went and read about the whole thing, and found an episode from another Discovery show called _Blueprint For Disaster_ that went into detail on the whole thing. They also interviewed some firefighters who responded, one saying "I thought it was an airplane crash".
Wait, the city inspects the facility shortly before the explosion and they are not on the hook in some way? What is wrong with this picture?
The city is never held responsible in the Netherlands. A few years ago they gave a permit for a monster truck event to be held on a parking lot close to spectators and a few people were killed when the driver of a monster truck lost control. Only the driver and the organizers were held accountable, the driver went to jail and had his truck seized.
@@Ozymandias1 True, local governments in The Netherlands have a lot of power and little public transparency. Local business owners are usually heavily involved in a city's political parties. Cities will therefore always favor companies above protecting the population.
A 16-year old girl was never found. Either she took advantage of the situation to vanish, or she was too close to the explosion and was literally blown to smithereens.
I think I'll believe the first option
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 Why would you think that?
@@Trust-me-I-am-a-dentist I like to apply optimism now and then.
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 Check✅
10 seconds before the first bang, she hang up the phone to her mother after she informed her about the fire. She lived in a student house around the corner. Her room overlooked the factory yard. So no, it wasn't option one...
Impressive to see a city council understand its place, step out of the way, and act as proper servants to the public... as they should.
to put it in perspective
this explosion had a power of about 1.8 Kiloton, the nuclear explosive power in Hirochima and Nagasaki was around 15 Kiloton
Wow! That does put it into perspective
@@taraelizabethdensley9475
indeed it does
the Beirut harbor explosion had a explosive force of about 1,2 Kiloton.
if not for open water, the death toll would be higher there
They aught to be glad that the fireworks cooked off as early as they did. Gave everyone time to GTFO.
The force of the explosion also explains why the kid making the video recording was thrown 30 feet into a hallway.
Another great video to watch
finally a channel covering this
Thx for all u time put into this. Thx thx thx
How is the fire dept not informed about a fire works factory in a residential neighborhood!!!?
they were, lots of inaccuracies here
I go to school in Enschede, and every day I drive with the bus past the memorial for this disaster, still shocks me what happened there all to years ago
It is frightening that a factory/warehouse for hazardous substances (explosive, toxic, etc.) is even allowed to be in the middle of a residential area...
This event has been suggested by so many of you! You can submit your topic suggestions at
bit.ly/DarkHistoryTopics
My first reaction, 2:30 minutes into the video:
- The factory was there before the people
- The people were well aware of the situation and have been complaining about it, but officials wouldn't do anything about it.
- There were actually 2 explosions. The first one pretty much only destroyed windows. The second explosion is what destroyed everthing surrounding the factory.
i almost forgot there were two explosions, thanks for reminding me. Its still amazing how few people got damaged/ded from this accident and I think its because the first explosion caused people closest to the culprit to go outside to a safe distance before the second explosion happened.
We weren't aware of the situation though, none of us knew. Trust me, we talked to all the neighbours after this happened. We talked A LOT.
In the Danny video, you can see the bloody difference. One is "oh holy fucking shit" while staying low.
The second one is _one_ frame of billowing red before it
RIP any that lost their lives!
it's terrible these trageties happen, but i'm glad that people document these events, less we forget them
Just found your channel and I love it, almost watched all of your videos already. Keep it up 👍
Congratulations to the citizens for maintaining the original neighborhood.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I was 16 and was playing with my sister on the day it happened. Since there was no youtube at that time and it happened half a world away, only 22 years later I can have a chance to watch it.
Thank you for sharing this!!
Yeeeaaahh, I know fireworks are banned in California, but if I see a billowing cloud of smoke nearby... after the explosions in the Netherlands, China, and Lebanon, I'm not taking any chances. I'm hightailing it out of there until that smoke is gone, man.
Yeah, illegal doesn't mean non-existent.
Just don't hightail out of your state
The firefighters DID NOT KNOW what the factory contained??!! Inexcusable! I was an UNPAID firefighter 30 years ago and every man in our station knew every commercial occupancy in our jurisdiction, and the neighbors as well. We regularly went on tours and did drills on the buildings. We also had protocols in place in case one of these places ever had a working fire.
Not that it would assuage your pontificating but I'm pretty certain they didn't revel in their ignorance providing they died and rushed into a hellish situation. You know, they are victims as well.
I doubt it was very much their fault, and more importantly why would it matter. Can you not find a morsel of sympathy? Seeing as you yourself *clearly* know how horrible the work is right? The common bonds of fellow fighter's?
What would you have them do. Even if they knew what could they have done in preventative measures? I don't know if you noted but it seems that the ones in charge were less than forthcoming as is usually the case.
Congratulations on your higher standards, I'm sure they would have loved to have you there. As your ways assuredly could have saved them, correct?
European shit hole....ther the reason codes exist. I think alot of laws that could be useful are not followed simply due to population control
If you don't have the information you can't act on it the fire brigade was not at fault
@@energywolff7112 did they evan bother
like the cops didn't see it dont want to know
what bloody great cover by all concerned evan local glass house workers
sorry local officials
didn't go very far down or up the line did the investigators go.
RAY IN GB
Don't always believe everything a youtuber says........
The thing that really moved me when I was watching the news that week here in the netherlands, was a shot of our queen Beatrix, comforting one of the victims on a simple stretcher.
Thans for the video!
As a kid i can remember this day very cleary.
We travel that day to Doetinchem too friends of mine parents, on the highway we seen the big mushroom cloud and mine father turn on the radio.
At location of the friends, nearby the hospital, i've seen drive by the hundreds of ambulances with sirens and some people who crying and calling too family if they allright...
As kid i didnt understand what was happening, later i understand and in 2006 with RUclips upcoming, i saw the first video's... Its still mind blowing that day!
Translation for the text on the memorial stone:
on the top it has names of victims with the text "Fireworks disaster 13th of may 2000"
and on the front it says "The house between heaven and earth that vanished"
My parents are living~ 25.2 km or ~15.7 miles away from the explosion and could clearly hear the noise of it as they told me shortly after during a telephone call.
So the in the video named 9 miles radius is clearly underestimated….and how my parents described the loud bang and noise I’m sure it was been heard even far much further away.
I was at my parents house, 60 km from the explosion and we could here a bang too. Wasn't very loud but you could tell it was very serious by the rumble off it. About an hour later we could see smoke in the distance.
As my first response was after only watching this video for a few minutes and saw the comments, i have to ad to the first one, that actually this video portray a reasonable and complete (for the length anyways) picture of the event! More then I anticipated reading the comments. So I actually think that the author of this video did a fairly good job! So, respect to you! 🙏👍
Great video very interesting and informative
Time doesn't heal any wounds, it simply allows you to learn to live with said wounds.
It heals the wounds. It doesn't heal the scars.
@@LostLargeCats A much better way to describe it.
Why are 99% of disaster so well understood after they happens....yet people, who know better, are clueless before they happen
I live one hour from Enschede, but I have actually never heard of this, this is a real shock as I have a family member who lived there at that time
_"I live one hour from Enschede"_
Under a rock? ;)
I remember saw this on tv back in the day, this is not the first time.
In 1807 a gunpower boot exploded in a town called Leiden, half off the town was destroyed by the blast and 151 poeple died.
The blast was so loud that it was heard in The Hague.
or 1654 delftse donderslag..
Everybody in that area knew it was a fireworks factory. The local government was trying to relocate the factory but the owners had no hurry to move. Also, nobody (government, fire brigade, owners and people around) believed fireworks could detonate like mass explosives (although there was plenty of evidence due to several explosions around the world). This believing was the reason why a lot of people believed (and probably still believe) the factory was hiding military explosives too.
Thank you 🔥❤️🙏
I was at McDonalds with my family. Was on a Saturday, just doing fun things with family, when we suddenly heard a bang. I was 7 but remember it so well. We thought a plane had crashed. The road from McDonalds to our house runs through the affected area and because we didn't know exactly what was going on, we went by car to our house. Of course we were stopped by the police, but I can still remember people walking on the street covered in dust and blood and what also stuck with me is that many people walked without shoes.
Insightful documentary. Very well researched
Enschede is pronounced (roughly, as the Dutch -sch does not have an English equivalent) as "EN-schuh-day"
Roombeek is pronounced as "Rome-bake"
Glad someone mentioned this, I did some work in Enschede during the early 90s and immediately thought how these reports are improved by correct pronunciation.
The Sch in Enschede is pronounced the same as the Ch in "Achmed."
I got the documents concerning this disaster. One of the owners of SE Fireworks uploaded it all to show how stuff was covered up.
Plus the links between certain companies, the timing, etc.
An expert on TV said that this could not have been ordinary fireworks.
And we in the Netherlands were told it was small sparkling fountains basically.
Mixed with other fireworks.
The only problem is that if fireworks are packed in boxes, they dont ignite all together.
That is what the expert said. And that is why they are packed in certain ways.
I see a lot of comments below. BUT has any of those who commented take the time to watch the timeline produced by Rudy?
Has anyone seen the documents?
Or investigated the links between certain companies and countries and this company?
It is pretty clear we will never know what exactly happened, but one thing is clear: We have not been told the entire truth about it.
ps, if anyone likes a copy of the zipfile containing the documents of this disaster , just give a hint and we get in contact.
I think they are also still available online. Just have to search for em.
They wont prove anything but they give insight in the investigation and how things were handled. Or not handled.
Seeing the destruction in those photos, and the force of the explosions, I'm amazed there weren't a lot more fatalities!
The question begs to be asked, how did the place pass inspection? Why was the inspector not prosecuted for negligence?
I live near Enschede, it was very big news throughout the Netherlands, beirut reminded me of Enschede too. Crazy
Corruption, corruption, corruption.
Always love your videos, I watch them religiously just like fascinating horror.
It took me a bit to understand you were saying enschede though, since your pronounciation is extremely far off haha. Enschede is not enshed, but more like en-skeh-day
Same here. The Raven's Eye is a good channel to watch too :)
my dad and mom actually live in hengelo (the city next to enschede and 11 years before i was born) and they said that the windows where like shaking and everything, may everyone that died on that day rest in peace.
Whenever you see a factory on fire, get away! You don’t know if there are explosives or toxic chemicals.
My dad was mowing the lawn when it happend and saw big concrete blocks fly true the air
first of all, why's there a firework factory in a neighborhood???
Oh yes I remember this day. I was 15 years old and my dad was working as a train driver at that time and that day I was with him in the cabine. We got near Apeldoorn station wich is 75 km/one hour drive away from Enschede and we could not go any further because Enschede would have been the next stop. I still remember the big clouds of smoke we could see even that far away from Enschede.
I was too young to really register anything. First big thing I caught was Lady Di's death.
Gaw😊r
@@JoshSweetvale Lady Di passed away in 1997; this was 2000 ;)
@@an_baby_orca This wasn't as big as Diana. For my mom anyway :v
Very well made video. Well done! * * * * *
Wow... how stupid do people have to be to not move aside for emergency personnel? Want to be up front?! Are you kidding me?! I think these people may have eaten a lot of lead paint chips as children. 🙄🙄🙄
This was not true either. Firefighters had no problem getting to the scene. People did not refuse to give way to emergency services and police did not have to push anyone.
Interesting case indeed. I still remember this one it was a chaos, and unbelieveble that this storage was in a housing area.
Maybe some other interesting cases from The Netherlands to cover are:
·Volendam New Year's fire
·El Al Flight 1862 (Bijlmer Disaster)
The El Al flight was another extremely tragic one. Not just that 747 crashing into an appartment complex and literally cutting it completely in half, but the massive cover up by the Israelis and even more sadly by the Dutch goverment as well in regards to that airplane containing nerve gas precursors/components destined for Israels highly illegal and illicit WMD program. A lot of the fire fighters who were involved in the aftermath became violently ill and came down with mysterious symptoms. It took a huge amount of pressure on the authorities to finally have them admit that yes that airplane really did contain extremely toxic nerve gas components which caused life long damage to the survivors of that disaster.
@@pieterveenders9793 I've seen a video of that. The number 3 engine came off the wing and as it did so, it "clipped" engine number 4, which also feel off the wing. The pilots had no idea that they had lost two engines. Didn't know about the illegal contraband...that's very interesting!!
@@usmale49 Back in the day, according to many docu's about it, it was "normal" to have uranium as contra weight on a plane;
Dumb people claimed later it was a "practise"for that other plane incident in 2001; cuz they confused the Hebrew spoken in the cockpit with Arabic... two different languages. 2 different events no relation except it involved a Plane.
Lessons from the disaster -
1. Never use a clump-up arrangement of storage facilities in fireworks factories; bulk powder needs to be separate from all other parts of the facility of these factories.
2. Explosive relief roofs need to be put in especially 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3g firework storage buildings.
3. A 5-mile buffer needs to be placed for any fireworks factories around residential facilities. Don't let the factories be too close to these residential areas at all!
4. For bulk storage facilities, especially with flash powders of 1.1 to 1.2 class (or even 1.3), humidifiers are required especially on very dry or cold days inside to prevent unforeseen static electricity buildup which can cause spontaneous sparks, combustion and a resultant disastrous explosion or explosions if the powder does ignite. And be sure that the tonnage of powder in these facilities do not exceed state, municipal, or national laws, requirements or standards!
I love to learn about these disasters