Power outage forces Rijksmuseum evacuation
Amsterdam city center is facing a power outage on Friday morning. Several buildings, including the Rijksmuseum, were evacuated, Het Parool reports.
The artworks are not in danger, because a generator ensures safety, a spokesperson for the Rijksmuseum said to the newspaper. The rooms are dark however, so visitors were evacuated.
The outage was first reported at 10:30 a.m. The believed cause of the power outage is an explosion on the Weteringcircuit. The explosion caused a crater in the ground in front of Cafe Mulder. It is not yet clear what happened. The road was closed and there were several ambulances and police at the scene. An air ambulance was also deployed. A police officer at the scene told Het Parool that at least one person was injured.
The victim, a man, was taken to hospital, but his injuries seem to be minor, a spokesperson for the local safety office told NU.nl. According to the spokesperson, the outage was caused by a cable being hit during work on Daniel Stapelstraat. The man who hit the cable "is still shaking" but did not have to go to hospital. "However this caused a sort of chain reaction in the cables", which ended in an explosion in front of Cafe Mulder.
A daycare on Quellijnstraat was also evacuated after its electricity box started smoking. The total of 17 kids at the daycare were given shelter in a Labour Party office on the same street.
The power outage also halted a large part of the tram traffic in the city center. Long lines of trams are standing still on Weteringschans, the Rokin and Ferdinand Bolstraat, according to the newspaper.
Over 28 thousand homes are affected by the outage, NU.nl reports. According to grid manager Liander, the outage spans postcode areas 1070 through 1075. Liander hopes to have power restored by 1:30 p.m.
