Talk:Enschede fireworks disaster

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on May 13, 2012, May 13, 2020, and May 13, 2023.

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Untitled[edit]

I came across this video at ebaumsworld: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/fireworkfactory.html

Could this be the Enschede Disaster? What I'm looking at is the building with the zigzag roof, near the end of the video. It looks just like the building pictured here: http://www.itc.nl/personal/hofstee/images/firework/fire860609s6.jpg

It seems certain that this is a video of the Enschede explosion, but I want to be absolutely sure.PiccoloNamek 08:16, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

This is 100% Enschede. I've seen it on television and SBS6 is a Dutch tv station. TheRaven 13:02, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thought so, especially when I heard the man speaking at the end. However, I needed to be absolutely sure. I'll go ahead and add the link on the main page.—Preceding unsigned comment added by PiccoloNamek (talk • contribs)

Video[edit]

Were the guys who took this video injured or killed in the explosion? --67.161.117.214 01:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He died at the second explosion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.127.20.161 (talk • contribs) 11:50, 14 May 2007

He didn't! I saw him live on television yesterday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.119.175.103 (talk) 07:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Vuurwerkramp[edit]

http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/enschede000523.html
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/enschede010511.html

No, he was in the documentary of the disaster made by Discovery Channel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.136.245.159 (talk) 13:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

discrepancy[edit]

There is a discrepancy of 1 death between this article and the Enschede page itself. Here says 22, there says 23. Which is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.12.51.217 (talk) 18:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The official death count is 23; one body was never found. (That is the simple story; some accounts suggest that one body was lost!) Harald88 (talk) 14:02, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Puzzling statement on this page[edit]

This page says, and I quote, "About 1,500 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving 1,250 people homeless". This is misleading. Were 250 of these homes unoccupied at the time, and indeed were all the other 1,250 occupied only by single people? I don't believe it. I dono't have the relevant data so that I can't correct this statement myself. I merely point out that this looks incorrect and if it is true then it needs a more comprehensive explanation. The answer is probably that many of the damaged houses were not actually rendered uninhabitable, but this needs to be explained and the statement as it appears on the page is too short and extremely confusing.

A large number of the 1500 were merely damaged and not destroyed. The 1250 people came from a smaller number of homes that were completely destroyed. 212.178.69.130 (talk) 09:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TonyinOttawa99999 (talk) 19:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

also, the exact number is vague, as some of the houses were sublet to students who weren't registered at the addresses (I used to live in one such that was damaged, not destroyed until graduation a few years before the disaster. e.g. the building I lived in was officially a shop but over the shop were apartments for 4 students, this would have been listed as a house but the people in it not part of the official numbers most likely as they were often not registered as living at that address). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:980:2C0B:1:F4E6:5F8E:D156:477B (talk) 06:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Scale of destruction[edit]

The article currently states that a 500-square-metre area was destroyed. That would be 20 * 25 meters! Or did you mean 500 * 500 meters ? That's quite an error. The latter is 250,000 m² or 25 hectares. --93.106.210.171 (talk) 20:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy not mentioned[edit]

The amount of controversy around the disaster is not reflected in this article. Notable, irregularities during the several investigations left us with 3 state secrets. The local news broadcaster is keeping a file on the affair, as it has been dragging on for 13 years (dutch). http://www.rtvoost.nl/dossiers/default.aspx?cat=514 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.241.142.45 (talk) 21:49, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disaster time 13:00 incorrect[edit]

Note that the disaster time as mentioned in the article (13:00GMT) is incorrect. It should be 14:30. But I only have sources in Dutch, don't know if that's OK / sufficient to correct it in the article? Sietske (talk) 03:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon[edit]

After I've repeatedly come across the hindsight bias, I felt it might be relevant in the context of the present Wikipedia article. According to the hindsight bias, people overestimate in retrospect the likelihood, foreseeability and/or inevitability of an event, and obviously a study has even found it in Wikipedia articles on catastrophes/ accidents: doi:10.1007/s00426-017-0865-7 That's why I was wondering whether hindsight bias might have entered into this article as well (i.e., whether the disaster is presented as more predictable and inevitable than it actually was from the foresight perspective, i.e., without outcome knowledge. According to researchers, the hindsight bias can be countered by deliberately taking information into account that would have argued against the outcome – obviously, the hindsight bias results from a retrospective one-sided focus on information that is consistent with the event while ignoring or not taking seriously information that is inconsistent with it (i.e., would have argued for another outcome). So maybe it would be good to check again and make sure that event-inconsistent information was not overlooked?--2A02:810D:1300:38E5:64FF:4320:ABEE:49DE (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction[edit]

"Footage of the disaster was featured in a 2009 episode of the Discovery Channel show Destroyed in Seconds." - why is this important enough to be featured in the introduction?

"Enschede was built around the S.E. Fireworks factory, which was the only one in the Netherlands to be located in a residential area." -> Later in this article it's stated that not the whole town on Enschede, but only this neighborhood in particular grew to enclose the factory. Enschede itself was founded long before 1300.--Vollprofi (talk) 21:31, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Vollprofi, you're right about the first sentence, it's completely WP:UNDUE and honestly doesn't need to be mentioned anywhere, much less in the lead. The second point seems to be mostly semantics and I don't really see the issue, so I've left it as is. AngryHarpy‍^talk 09:42, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]