Final consideration
2.2
Responsibility of the businessman and of the government
a. SE Fireworks In part I of this final report and in investigative report A, part III what shortcomings were detected by the Committee at SE Fireworks that are of importance to the answer to the question of how the fireworks disaster took place are specified. It is of special importance that not only more fireworks were stored at the company than it had obtained permits for, but that the majority of these fireworks were, in addition, of a much heavier class than was permitted by the two environmental permits in force. This created a very large safety risk. Balktekst
The Committee’s investigation has shown that the situation at SE Fireworks was also faulty in a great number of other aspects. The following items have appeared to have a crucial meaning for the origin and development of the fire and explosions on May 13, 2000. • fireworks were present in the repackaging area C2 where the first fire started, in which area no fireworks were permitted to be present when no work was being performed, as was the case on Saturday May 13, 2000; • the water-pipe lead-through between the repackaging area and the adjacent bunker C4 was of a nature which allowed fire to jump across; • two containers with no permits had been added in 1999; one of these two containers (E15) formed a side of the triangle in which fireworks ejected from the repackaging area and/or the adjacent bunker started a fire; that triangle was, due to the way in which this container had been positioned, nearly closed off and difficult to access; • the part of the terrain in this triangle had not been kept sufficiently clean to prevent the fire from spreading; for example, a trailer was parked there. This is why fire could develop against the wall of container E2, which spread to the fireworks stored in it. If the permit had been observed in these four items, fire could not have occurred, or at least not an escalation of it. The weight of the fireworks in storage would presumably not have mattered in that case. For that matter, SE Fireworks did not meet its legal obligations in other aspects. For example, the company operated without delivery and occupation permits in the second half of the 90s. The risk inventory and risk evaluation, made mandatory in the Labour Condition Act, did not meet the requirements either. b. The government The Committee has also detected a series of shortcomings in the government. In specific relation to SE Fireworks, the following permits granted to the company management are involved.
254