Officials in Berlin are blaming cold temperatures for the sudden destruction of an 82 foot tall cylindrical aquarium tank containing more than 1,400 tropical fish in the open-air atrium of a hotel at approximately 6 AM local time Friday, sending the doomed sea creatures and over a quarter million gallons spilling onto the surrounding streets, the Associated Press reports.
Two people suffered very minor injuries, a toll that would have been far worse had the tank waited another hour to explode. “Despite all the destruction, we were still very lucky. We would have had terrible human damage,” said Mayor Franziska Giffey, who described the burst as like a “tsunami.”