Enschede Fireworks Disaster

The question was a simple one, but the Dutch Prime Minister, Wim Kok, had no answer. When Liz Tiben, a 68-year-old survivor of Saturday's devastating explosion in Enschede was presented to the shaken-looking premier yesterday, she was polite but blunt: "I said to Mr Kok, 'How is it permitted to have such a fireworks warehouse near such a lot of houses?' He nodded, and simply said it was terrible."

Twenty-four hours after the explosion at a fireworks warehouse in a residential district, intense heat kept the fire burning in the heart of a Dutch border town reduced to rubble reminiscent of a war zone. A giant, smoking crater was all that remained of the warehouse's storage bunkers. Homes were reduced to blackened ruins and surrounded by the burnt-out hulks of cars and mangled bicycle frames.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/...