About 360 kilos of explosives in a company warehouse in Haaren, the police found during a raid on Monday. The stuff, 1500 Cobras and more than 300 shells, belongs to the category of heavy fireworks. The risks were enormous, says explosives expert Ad van Riel: “If this explodes, there will be nothing left of the warehouse and they will notice this from hundreds of meters away.”
Ad van Riel is very concerned about people who store the explosive stuff in a garage in the middle of a residential area. “It doesn’t belong there at all. In fact, Cobras and shells are simply prohibited fireworks,” he says. “It’s completely irresponsible.”
360 kilos of explosives, what is the force when this explodes? “The gunpowder, in this case flash powder, explodes at 3000 to 8000 meters per second,” says Van Riel. “There will be nothing left of that warehouse. The debris will be thrown around for hundreds of meters and will smash into houses and the daycare center in the area. The windows will also be shattered by the impact.”
“That stuff goes into the air at the slightest thing.”
Jos van der Stap, the national explosives coordinator of the police, shares that opinion. “With this party, the people inside wouldn’t have stood a chance, not to mention innocent people who might happen to walk by,” he said after the discovery.
It is a serious risk and the chance that it will actually happen is enormous, says Van Riel. “People think it’s not too bad, but that flash powder is sensitive to a lot of things. A friction or a shock, moisture, static electricity or current, that stuff goes into the air at the slightest thing.”
“It’s cool, a Cobra, but it’s actually a hand grenade.”
Young people think it’s cool to light a Cobra like that. “But actually you have a hand grenade,” says the expert. “If that thing in your hand snaps, there’s nothing left and all that’s left is amputation.”
The Cobras are surprisingly easy to obtain. According to Van Riel, they enter our country in container loads, including from China. “I actually don’t understand our government,” says Van Riel. “Those fireworks are devastatingly dangerous, but it seems as if the awareness is not there.”
The police have seized the explosive material. The party will be destroyed.
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