The major leakage of a barrel containing ammonia on a Diemens industrial estate caused odor nuisance in the surrounding area for hours. Dozens of firefighters worked all morning to clean up the toxic liquid. Employees from surrounding business premises had to watch from the sidewalk all the while. “A little thrill is nice, but I’d rather go back to work.”
Ultimately, no one was injured in the ammonia leak, which occurred around 8 a.m. on Visseringweg. The Amsterdam-Amstelland safety region can only say that an ‘ammonia-containing cylinder’ had opened, but construction worker Sander knows more. He was the first to call the fire brigade when things went wrong. “We immediately smelled a terrible grave smell, so strong that we started running,” he says. A colleague of his describes it as a ‘rotten egg smell’.
Several buildings evacuated
Sander: “Then the guy who had gone wrong came running outside and we called the emergency number. He told us that he was exchanging two tanks of that stuff and that something went wrong.”
A number of buildings in the vicinity of the building where the leak occurred suffered from the stench. These buildings have been temporarily evacuated. Sander watched with them. “A little sensation is nice, but at a certain point we wanted to get back to work. Fortunately, it no longer stinks.”