Culemborg fireworks disaster
The company was housed in two buildings: the first one containing a bunker dating from the Second World War (which remained intact during the disaster), an office, an assembly hall (25 by 16 square metres) and five small storage rooms.
[1] The owner, Henk Koolen, had been working in the fireworks business for 15 years, and achieved a good reputation within the Netherlands and abroad.
[1] An enormous air pressure wave ensued, which caused major structural and bodily damage in a vast area around it.
The Explosive Ordnance Disposal service (EOD), which, coincidentally, was headquartered in Culemborg until 2011,[2][9] deployed a "Wheelbarrow" observation robot for reconnaissance.
[4] The firefighters had to wait until either the "end of the afternoon" or the "beginning of the evening" until they were given permission to start extinguishing efforts, when the EOD deemed the danger of further explosions to be over.
Reconstruction was hindered by the fact that no party could be held responsible, and thus it was impossible to determine whether the victims should be paid indemnities from the insurance companies or the government.
[6] The film focuses on the clearance, reconstruction and emotional processing of nearby residents, as well as on the responsibilities of local government, including the handling of damage claims and allowing a possible rebuilding of the factory.
To the great distress and annoyance of the overwhelming majority of nearby residents,[6] Koolen has long maintained plans to rebuild his fireworks factory.
[7] In April 1991, the TNO Prins Maurits Laboratorium published a report on the Culemborg fireworks disaster, commissioned by the Ministry of Defence.
[11] TNO concluded that relatively light fireworks in large quantities caused an unexpectedly heavy explosion, because they were no longer contained within their packages.
As of 2001, the consensus amongst experts, including the Openbaar Ministerie in Utrecht, research institute TNO, and inspectors and colleagues in the fireworks business, was that there had "presumably" not been more than the permitted 200 kilograms of gunpowder present in February 1991.
[8] The April 1991 TNO report made several recommendations to the four government ministries involved in order to improve fireworks safety.
In response, it was almost unanimously concluded that these could have been prevented or better controlled if the lessons from the Culemborg fireworks disaster had been converted into more rigorous safety measures.
[2][12][13][11][8][14] Investigations showed that little to nothing was done with TNO's recommendations, because the ministries and inspection services "had communicated badly with each other, or not at all", Interior Minister Klaas de Vries admitted in 2001.
[12] The 15 January 2001 investigative report of the Firefighting Care and Disaster Control Inspection of the Ministry of the Interior, titled Onderzoek vuurwerkramp Enschede.
The Dangerous Substance Accident Control service from the Interior Ministry did seek to introduce stricter regulations for fireworks, which was discussed in several meetings of the Commissie Preventie Rampen door gevaarlijke stoffen (CPR, Dangerous Substances-borne Disasters Prevention Commission),[14] but that was part of the Firefighting department, which at the time was supposed to focus on extinguishing fires, not on controlling risks.
[8] During ten CPR meetings conducted from 12 September 1991 until 31 March 1994, the subject of fireworks was deferred every time, and eventually eliminated.
After investigation by TNO, the topic was put back on the CPR agenda in 1995; a working group was established to revise the fireworks directive, but the ministries involved did not provide funding and personnel for it.
While waiting for a new directive, the Ministry of Defence's office, which advised municipalities on issuing licences to fireworks companies, acted on its own accord.
[14] Because of this bureaucratic maze with fragmented responsibilities, almost nothing was done with the TNO recommendations, and no extra safety measures were taken until after the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster.
The municipality of Enschede commanded a relocation, scheduled for 2002, due to a desire to build more houses on the current factory grounds; safety was of secondary concern.
