Volendam

At the Millennium Party at New Years Eve (31 December 2000 – 1 January 2001) a terrible accident happened in the Netherlands . Hundreds of partying teenagers and young people were caught by a short but heavy fire in a café at Volendam.
Someone lighted ‘little stars' which is meant to be ‘cold fire'.
A spark of this firework flew up to the ceiling were there were dry X-mass decoration.
It caught fire immediately and within seconds all the decoration on the ceiling was burning and fell and the teenagers.

Fourteen teenagers were killed and over 260 were injured by the fire or the smoke. Most of them had to be brought to a hospital with a special department for the treating of burn wounds. That had to be in hospitals all over the Netherlands and even Belgium because the capacity of the hospitals was not enough for so many victims. These young people are mutilated for the rest of their lives.



The owner of the Café was being sued because he did not impregnated the X-mass decoration with an anti-burning- substance.
After this terrible accident the fire department is being stricter in checking up public places every year.

In 2005 three teenager who live in Volendam and were there at the moment of the fire, came up with the idea to make a book about the accident to memorize the victims and to offer comfort and support to the family of those victims. But it was also about solidarity with the whole community of Volendam. The benefit of the book, that contains photographs and poems, is meant for a fund for the survivors of the accident.
The books was called "Wolken over Voilendam" which means "clouds above Volendam".