The Netherlands started the new year off with a bang (and a few pops and sparks), with chaos, hospitalisations, and arrests swiftly following. 🎆
Following a two-year fireworks ban over the pandemic, the Dutch returned a little too enthusiastically to lighting fireworks.
The result? Dozens of arrests, according to RTL Nieuws.
Heavy fireworks thundered
The Netherlands has an ongoing ban on certain categories of fireworks, but merrymakers didn’t let that stop them from putting on a truly explosive New Year’s Eve show.
A crowd of 14 people were arrested in the Crooswijk district of Rotterdam, after refusing police orders to stop lighting heavy fireworks and disperse.
In addition to this, a further 35 people were also arrested in Rotterdam and its surrounding areas.
Fireworks ban? What fireworks ban?
Despite at-home fireworks displays being banned in several municipalities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Nijmegen, residents merrily blasted their way to the new year.
READ MORE | Fireworks shops “extremely busy” — despite the ban in several municipalities
Police were even deployed at some locations, such as Amsterdam’s Dam Square, to disperse merrymakers having a brawl.
Add guns, knives, and…err, bikes to the chaos
Fireworks weren’t the only things going off with a bang this NYE, with four people arrested at Leliënstein in Rotterdam-Zuid for shooting a firearm into the sky.
No guns? No problem, we’ll just reach for knives instead, said rioters in Amsterdam.
At least three people were injured in one of these stabbing incidents at the Beursplein, with one of them needing to be hospitalised.
Of course, bikes needed to get into the action as well (it’s the Netherlands, after all!), and police intervening in a bonfire in Scheveningen were struck with a bicycle several times.
Hospitals swarmed with fireworks injuries
Of course, with fireworks come, well, blown-off fingers. Dutch hospitals reported being just as busy with injuries as they were before the pandemic. In particular, a child in Drachten was seriously injured when lighting fireworks.
One fatality has been reported so far. A 23-year-old Brabant man is dead after a carbide shooting accident.
Meanwhile, Rotterdam’s eye hospital reported 17 victims of eye injuries, leading ophthalmologist, Tjeerd de Faber, to refer to it as an “old-fashioned horror night.”
What do you think of the Dutch ringing in the new year with a bang? Tell us all about it in the comments below!