Bus stops in Drenthe are often difficult to access for people with disabilities. This is the worst situation in our province in the whole of the Netherlands. It was also the week where several carbon monoxide detectors went off in the Smetana flats in Assen and homes were evacuated. That and more news marked Drenthe’s week.
LM Piercings has been pierced since last Monday. The Coevorder shop came under controversy on February 11, after more than 150 customers reported to the GGD with ear complaints. They used a homemade salt spray that was supposed to prevent inflammation, but the stuff did the opposite.
“They cut open my ear to let everything out,” victim Lisa Doldersum previously told RTV Drenthe. After they and other victims with permanent damage did not receive a response from the Coevorder Piercing Shop, they hired a personal injury lawyer.
LM Piercings is now closing its doors. “After many years of running our physical store and piercing studio with great pleasure and dedication, we have decided to end these activities immediately,” said the company, which will continue to operate as a webshop.
Nine out of ten bus stops in Drenthe are not or only partially accessible to people with disabilities, according to research by the DOVA Partnership (Decentralized Public Transport Authorities) on Tuesday. This means that Drenthe scores the worst of all provinces in the Netherlands.
“If you have a bad stop nearby, you’re screwed,” Jan Meursing from Gieten also knows. With his electric wheelchair he often has to bump across the grass to a bus stop, because the usual path to the boarding point is too steep. “You have to figure out very carefully where you should and shouldn’t be. That sometimes causes annoyance and also costs a lot of time.”
The Province of Drenthe indicates that it is busy making the bus stops easily accessible. In the administrative agreement ‘accessibility of public transport’, agreements have been made to make public transport accessible to everyone by 2040.
Residents of the Smetana flats in Assen were startled in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday after a carbon monoxide detector went off in several homes. The ‘red flat’ was evacuated.
“After the reports in the red apartment, we actually measured carbon monoxide yesterday. The entire apartment was then examined. We could not find anything during new measurements,” says spokesperson Carry Seidel.
Later that evening, the fire brigade received further reports of carbon monoxide, this time from the ‘blue apartment’. That turned out to be a false alarm. Seidel: “We also took measurements here, but we did not discover anything here. The cause turned out to be an empty battery in a CO detector, which therefore started to beep.”
Two residents of the blue apartment can laugh about the incident a day later. “I’m not worried. But for our safety, we have requested a new CO detector, because we cannot replace the batteries with our detector ourselves.”
It was also the week in which early spring broke through. The terraces in Drenthe filled up on Wednesday and Thursday. “I heard the birds chirping and the sun rose and then the spring fever started to come,” says a sun worshiper on the Brink in Assen. “So I thought: we’re going to make the most of this by having a bite to eat on a terrace.”
The open-air swimming pool De Leemdobben in Vries also did well. The water was 23.5 degrees and that was enough to open the pool. “We had ten swimmers in the first hour,” says lifeguard Carin Kroezen. “And at the end of the morning we have 57 visitors. That just makes me very happy.”
Four ExpertCare medical guest houses in the country will close soon. Chronically ill children can live in such a house temporarily to relieve parents. The closure has major consequences for 10-year-old John and his family from Assen. John now occasionally goes to stay in Wezep, but that is no longer possible after March.
“It is difficult to understand that this is announced at such short notice,” says father Patrick Deelen. “We have another problem, another thing to worry about. That is already causing damage to us and to other families.”
The closure of the guest houses also leads to concerns at hospitals, because children like John can end up there more quickly. “Children do not belong in a hospital if it is not necessary for the medical care they need,” says pediatrician Willemien de Weerd. “We therefore hope that ExpertCare will still find sufficient financing for this complex care.”
