Quay wall collapses in front of Amsterdam Univ. building

Part of the quay wall on Grimburgwal, close to a University of Amsterdam building, collapsed on Tuesday afternoon. No one was injured. The municipality believes that a sinkhole caused the collapse. The rest of the quay was propped up and the situation is "stable".

The quay wall collapsed at the University's BG2 building, which houses the art history and humanities faculties, among other departments. The building was evacuated as a precaution. A spokesperson for the university told Het Parool that everyone left the building safely. "Fortunately, there were few people in the building anyway because of coronavirus."

One of the university employees who was in the building at the time of the collapse, told the newspaper that they didn't notice much. "We were in an office on the ground floor, in the corner of the building. The quay collapsed in the middle. A bulletin board next to me rattled and it started to drift, but other than that we didn't really notice what was going on." The building was evacuated and the employees were sent home to work from there.

Large sections of quay walls in Amsterdam are in poor condition due to years of neglect. The city recently started pushing more money into maintenance. "I am very happy that this did not lead to personal injury," alderman Sharon Dijksma said on Tuesday. "This again shows that there is great need to invest in maintenance. We have been doing that since last year."