Major Operation in Gessertshausen: On Friday midday, police and rescue services were dispatched to the premises of a brewery on the main street. According to initial police findings, ammonia had leaked there. Markus Trieb, head of the press office for Swabia North Police, reported that one person was injured as a result of the gas leak and had to be taken to the hospital. Another employee of the company complained of health problems due to the excitement of the day and was treated on site. Drivers on the B300 needed patience. Following the gas alarm, there was no passage through the town for hours.
Brewery in Gessertshausen Must Be Evacuated
The emergency call came into the integrated control center exactly at 11:36 AM. It reported an ammonia leak at the brewery. How the accident occurred remained unclear on Friday. The police later spoke of a technical defect. As a result of this leak, the brewery building had to be evacuated, reported police spokesperson Trieb. The “immediate vicinity” of the brewery also had to be evacuated. The B300 was completely closed on Friday afternoon, causing traffic jams. On a Friday midday, many commuters are typically on their way home from work there.
Ammonia is a pungent-smelling, colorless, water-soluble, and toxic gas. In breweries, ammonia is used for cooling in various stages of the brewing process. Employees usually do not come into contact with the gas. Inhaling ammonia irritates and corrodes the mucous membranes and can cause severe damage to the respiratory tract, potentially even leading to death in extreme cases, says Robert Schmitt, head of the Zusmarshausen police station. Nick (17) noticed this smell. The young man from Diedorf was in Deubach when he saw various emergency vehicles heading towards Gessertshausen. He followed on his bicycle but intuitively recognized the situation from the acrid smell and subsequently observed the operation from outside the danger zone.
CSA Specialists from Dinkelscherben Seal the Leak at the Brewery
The deployment of rescue forces is large: around 80 members of the Augsburg professional fire department, fire departments from Neusäß, Gersthofen, Dinkelscherben, and Gessertshausen, as well as paramedics, were sent. Initially, the local fire departments from Margertshausen, Deubach, and Wollishausen were also involved. So-called CSA specialists from Dinkelscherben—firefighters trained in handling chemical protective suits and dangerous materials—searched for the leak. Around 1:15 PM, they managed to seal it. However, the operation was not over yet. It would take several more hours to ventilate the building sufficiently to withdraw all forces, said Franziskus Bronnhuber of the Gessertshausen fire department around 2 PM.
Robert Schmitt, head of the Zusmarshausen police station, is also on site with 16 of his officers. Among other tasks, they are stopping traffic on the B300 and from the direction of Deubach. Vehicles from Diedorf are being directed via Eichenstraße towards the animal clinic—a dead end, however. A Gessertshausen council member has no understanding whatsoever for the police’s actions. He curses harshly at Robert Schmitt, saying the emergency services should do their job properly, and then cycles away. A local resident who lives opposite the brewery was shopping at the time of the ammonia leak and was temporarily not allowed back into his house; he also suspects an over-dimensioned response.
A Resident Suspects an Over-Dimensioned Response
Is that the case? “Absolutely not,” says Franziskus Bronnhuber, who is professionally the press spokesperson for the Munich fire department. “For hazardous material alarms, there are certain keywords that allow no other course of action,” he explains. An ammonia leak is one of them. As he says this, the specialists from Dinkelscherben, having completed their work, must first be decontaminated outside the danger zone. During the operation, residents were urged via the NINA warning app to keep windows and doors closed and to turn off ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Not far from the operation site is Gessertshausen’s town hall. Mayor Jürgen Mögele was on site himself until the afternoon. “This is a major operation for the fire department, but they can handle it,” he observed. The fact that the B300 was still completely closed shortly after 3 PM on Friday, while enabling emergency services to work unhindered, is however a serious consequence of the accident at the brewery for the town and through traffic.
On the very edge of the scene stands a man with noticeably reddened eyes. He is so distraught he doesn’t even know if this Friday is his lucky day. The brewery employee, who does not want his name in the newspaper, had been called home due to an emergency just before the ammonia leak. The very employee who subsequently had to go to the hospital had called him and told him not to return to the workplace. Although the man has experienced an ammonia leak before in his decades in the brewery industry, he is visibly shocked by the events. And his colleagues who didn’t know he wasn’t in the plant at the time of the accident got a fright too: “They were looking for me,” he reports. No one from the brewery’s management was reachable for comment on Friday.
Latest Posts
