ABSTRACT
The nightmare began at three o'clock in the afternoon. The first signs of a drama stained the clear blue sky. The billowing white smoke, bangs and the crack of fireworks seemed totally out of place. Those people who, despite the fine weather, had been sitting indoors were drawn outside by the spectacle. Somewhere in the north of the city, something was wrong. A few minutes after half past three, two enormous explosions transformed the Roombeek neighbourhood into a disaster area. The SE Fireworks factory had been blown sky high, taking with it most of the surrounding residential area. Television reports showed the full extent of the inferno. Hard figures confirmed the tragedy: 500 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged; 1500 homes suffered moderate damage, and 500 people were injured. Twenty-one people lost their lives, but the figure would have been much higher if more people had been inside their homes, rather than outside making the most of the beautiful weather on a free Saturday afternoon, watching the strange, prolonged firework display. The area was a pre-war neighbourhood, with social housing located around industrial areas that cannot entirely conceal the decline of the textile industry. The situation would have been even worse if the explosion had affected the six thousand litres of ammonia stored at the nearby Grolsch brewery. As the smoke cleared and the gunpowder dispersed, revealing so much emptiness and suffering, many people began to ask how such a disaster could have happened in a residential area like this (De Lugt 2000).
