Ten years ago today it was a very hot day and I was at a barbeque with some friends when the news came on, as somebody got an text message on his mobile about something big happening in Enschede. This was still before mobiles, let alone internet capable mobiles and blogs and all other modern news sources became ubiquitous, so we hurrried inside to see the images on the special news broadcast. It was horrible, twentythree people killed and a whole neigbourhood destroyed and left looking like something last seen in World War II, as witnessed by the picture above.
What caused the disaster was a fire in a fireworks storage at the SE Fireworks company, located just on the edge of the neighbourhood. The fire got out of hand, got to the fireworks and these in the end exploded. As the video above shows, the force of the explosion was incredible. The responsibility for the disaster has never been satisfactorily established, with a new investigation having been promised only this week again, but having a fireworks factory on the outskirts of a suburb cannot have helped…