Hackerspace Pixelbar in Rotterdam has burned down | Hacker News Reader

Hackerspace Pixelbar in Rotterdam has burned down

hsnl.social

40 pointsmcflyrdam10 comments

Oh fuck. Hackerspaces tend to be ad-hoc repurposed/disused industrial or commercial spaces that tend to overlook fire, health/safety, and disability building compliance. City bureaucracies find out about these spaces and then drop an angry hammer on their heads with a laundry list of expensive mandatory changes. They don't want another Ghost Ship fire where almost half of occupants died (not a hackerspace, but a live-in art studio and improvised concert venue).

PSA: If you ever want to live with 10-20 other people in semi-illegal collective housing in an old factory, try not to make it an electrical or flammable death trap with fire drills and following proper building codes with layers of sensible preventative choices for living in something undocumented. Less wood framing (metal 2x4"s are customary in the US for interior, nonloadbearing walls) and flammable materials, less toxic substances, and proper conduit armoring and system grounding.

One should point out that hackerspaces in netherlands, germany, austria, switzerland, etc are usually quite aware and observant of fire safety, etc.

Hackerspace organisers are usually confronted several times a year with this topic when they meet up for bigger events and have to deal with getting the local fire departments approval for buildups.

"Hackerspaces tend to be (...) spaces that tend to overlook fire, health/safety, and disability building compliance."

I think that's not very relevant to this specific occasion, because the fire did not start at the hackerspace. The first flames and smoke were on the opposite side of the huge open warehouse, of which the hackerspace was just a relatively tiny part.

Pixelbar was a small free standing two-storey building within the very large warehouse. I don't know if the hackerspace was built to code, but I think it wouldn't have mattered much in this case. By the time the fire reached that building-within-a-building, it must have already been a nigh unstoppable inferno. The fire safety of the surrounding warehouse may have been questionable, but you can't really blame the the hackerspace for that.

The pixelbar had just had a safety inspection (as much as the whole space) and its kind of an irony that it burned down after that was passed. The general problem was that not the Hackerspace itself burned down but the building around it. There is lots of media coverage on that https://www.flashphoto.nl/nieuws/13281/zeer-grote-uitslaande... gives an idea. There were lots of small companies in that space that worked in various areas. It is unknown where the fire broke out and given that the building is now taken down it is unlikely that we ever find out. Noone got hurt which is the most important part.

I wrote a bit about the fire and the follow up at https://milliways.social/@mcfly/110620505067543759 if you want to be updated.

This is terrible :-( I imagine re-building a hackerspace that organically accumulated infrastructure over years and years is going to be a hard task. You have my sympathies and donation: https://www.pixelbar.nl/

8 years of building the space, projects and other stuff :(

Sympathies and well wishes from the Oslo hackerspace Hackeriet. Damn shame. :(

The hackerspace Pixelbar in Rotterdam has burned down.

At the moment we from the hackerspace look at the situation and hope to rebuild again. :-(

terrible :'C sending money now

this blows bigTime :-/

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