While prying eyes are normally not really welcome during disasters, things are now a bit different in Borculo. Although they have to remain behind crush barriers, visitors to Incidents City in the Fire and Storm Disaster Museum can marvel at incidents, disasters and crashes that have occurred in the Netherlands in recent years, meticulously recreated with Lego bricks.
Conflagration and train crash
For example, children are amazed at the conflagration in the monumental church annex of the Sint-Lambertuskerk in Veghel, where a major fire broke out at the turn of the year. With stacked building blocks it is easy to recognize in Borculo. And even more topical: the train accident in Voorschoten on 4 April.
The builders of the exhibition, firefighters Evert de Graaf and André Overeem from Utrecht cannot stop talking about it. “All the disasters that it Youth News and where the fire service is involved, we build”, explains De Graaf.
Children can learn from it
“It’s a hobby that got out of hand. In 2004 we started recreating one incident on one and a half square meters at home, but we now present 23 disasters, preferably as current as possible. There is a lot of interest in it. Lego has become really hot during corona.”
The De Graaf and Overeem exhibition has also been set up in Denmark, the birthplace of Lego. “That was really an honor for us,” says De Graaf.
Gas explosion
Rocco (8) from Eerbeek is indeed amazed at the accident situations that take place a few meters away. He is impressed by a scene on the A1 motorway near Apeldoorn, where part of a wind turbine ended up on the motorway on December 28, 2022.
“But I also find that accident at that flat exciting,” says the primary school student from Eerbeek, referring to the flat in Bilthoven destroyed by a gas explosion on April 22 last year.
Due to the success in 2022, it is the second time that the exhibition can be seen in Borculo. Incidents City is intended to draw attention to the work of the fire brigade. In previous years, the exhibition was on display during the Christmas holidays at the PIT Safety Museum in Almere.
“We were able to bring the Lego park to the Achterhoek after corona, because the subsidy provision stopped in Almere and it simply belongs in our museum,” says coordinator Gertie Voskamp of Incidents City.
“It’s amazing how those men imitated the twelve burnt-out city buses in a bus shed in Utrecht,” he says, pointing to the scale-recreated accident situation. “And everything is also correct with the train accident in Voorschoten. The ditch next to the track, the freight train loaded with lime, an NS intercity, but also the railway crane that was involved. Everything can be seen.”
Subway on whale tail
High-profile incidents are also the accident in which a metro train in Spijkenisse ended up on the whale’s tail artwork. “Children can learn from it. And realize that the fire brigade does more than extinguish a fire and get a cat out of a tree,” says Evert de Graaf, while six children are busy with the competition that has been organized.
As an educational element, they can participate in the assignment find the 23 incidents in Incidents City .
Devastating cyclone
After Rocco completes the contest, he continues into the Storm Disaster Museum. Because Borculo is actually best known for the storm that hit the Netherlands in the afternoon and early evening of August 10, 1925. The Achterhoek village became world news when it was largely destroyed by a cyclone within 7 or 8 minutes. There were 3 deaths. In Markvelde, ten kilometers away, sand-lime stones were even found.
In the days and weeks after the storm, many Dutch people moved to Borculo: disaster tourism. The pinnacle was reached on Sunday, August 16, 1925. That day, 5,000 vehicles came to Borculo and a total of 110,000 visitors. Gertie Voskamp does not have to count on those numbers now. And maybe that’s a good thing.