‹Tschernobâle› – The bridge in toxic water
Nobody who was living in Basel on the 1st of November 1986 will ever forget that night: When the sirens began wailing shortly before 4 am and the radio urged people not to leave their homes, many feared the worst. By morning, the Rhine had turned blood-red in Basel. A major fire had broken out during the night at the Sandoz chemical company in Schweizerhalle; water that was used to fight the blaze, contaminated with mercury, pesticides and dyes, had then flowed into the river. It killed hundreds of thousands of fish and polluted the drinking water as far away as Mainz – an ecological disaster of international proportions, only a few months after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. For the people of Basel, the word ‘Schweizerhalle’ is deeply engraved in their collective memory.
Bildquelle: KEYSTONE/Str.