11 injured in Oranienburg: falling branches hit guests at private celebration of Jehovah's Witnesses

[ChocoBro]

https://www.focus.de/panorama/wetter-aktuell/unwetter-fegt-ueber-gelaende-hinweg-11-schwerverletzte-in-oranienburg-aeste-treffen-gaeste-bei-privatfeier-der-zeugen-jehovas_id_10820204.html

 

Quote

No more than 24 hours after the last severe storm, heavy storms hit the Greater Berlin area again on Wednesday evening. In Oranienburg, up to 150 people were on private grounds at a celebration of Jehovah's Witnesses early Wednesday evening. The party-goers were completely surprised by the squalls.

 

Several pavillions and tables had been set up in the garden. The heavy storm gusts in the run-up to the thunderstorm apparently surprised the guests, who had no time to move to safety, as branches fell to the ground and met several people present.

 

As Stephan Liedtke, deputy city fire chief of the fire department in Oranienburg, explained to FOCUS Online, eleven people were sometimes seriously injured, eight of them came to the hospital for treatment.

 

The rescue workers arrived with a large contingent. The situation on the site then fortunately turned out to be less critical as initially feared,  Liedtke said.

 

Rescue helicopters had been requested, but these were not able to land due to the storm.

 

 

 

[Arumuga Raja]

3 hours ago, ChocoBro said:

https://www.focus.de/panorama/wetter-aktuell/unwetter-fegt-ueber-gelaende-hinweg-11-schwerverletzte-in-oranienburg-aeste-treffen-gaeste-bei-privatfeier-der-zeugen-jehovas_id_10820204.html

 

 

Oh we are pray to jehovah 

[JennyM]

We don't know what lives can bring tomorrow. 😥

[Doug]

3 hours ago, JennyM said:

We don't know what lives can bring tomorrow. 😥

Because time and unexpected events overtake them all. Ec. 9:11

[Old]

Was this event coupled with the Special covention? We have several friends in Berlin at this moment.

[pnutts]

We have a young pioneer sister that is in Berlin this week. She was in our congregation but moved across town to a needier congregation.

 

The youngest daughter of one of our elders is in Germany in Arabic group.

[Gi-Gi]

I have some close friends that are delegates from Texas and are in the Berlin right now for the International

[ChocoBro]

I could imagine the brothers were planning to enjoy a nice evening as a congregation ahead of the international assembly, maybe invited some friends from abroad too.

 

It can't have been an officially organized gathering. I assume the brothers weren't paying attention to the weather forecasts and weren't considering any safety issues ahead of the storm warnings.

 

The sad news is there are a lot of snarky and nasty comments under the articles pertaining to this on facebook, but also a lot of kind words from people that say they know us and don't understand where all this hate towards us is coming from. Germans are very biased towards Witnesses and do like to pick on us as a minority as far as this is socially acceptable.

 

In any case, this shows that it is wise to keep an eye on weather forecasts and not to naively go ahead and go through with your plans in such a situation but find a different solution. They ought to have shifted the event indoors or cancelled it altogether.

[lsg59]

a sister came back from the berlin convention and told us about this.  she said one sister was seriously injured by a falling tree