Owner wants to quit gas station over fireworks-throwing rioters

After another New Year’s Eve filled with fears that his petrol station would be blasted with illegal fireworks, the owner of a petrol site in Ooltgensplaat has had enough. As soon as he can, he will stop his business.

In Ooltgensplaat in South Holland, at the turn of last year, the Mobile Unit had to be called in to drive away a group of people throwing fireworks. And it was not for the first time that the South Holland town experienced a New Year’s Eve full of unrest and riots. Aad van der Wende, the owner of the petrol station, also went through a waking night himself, he told AD Goeree-Overflakkee.

He operates an AVIA XPress filling station near his home. The filling station uses the facility with stocks of petrol and diesel in the tanks under the pavement in front of his house. At the previous turn of the year, two Cobras were thrown through the windows of his front door, according to Van der Wende with the intention that they landed on the pump. “They thought: that will be a nice fire then. But they don’t understand that half the village then flies into the air. And they themselves too.”

‘One day it will go wrong’

This year, he put two-metre-high fences around the petrol station and kept watch inside his petrol station himself. To avoid being visible himself, he kept the place unlit. The municipality put a few security guards at the fences. Although things did not go wrong at the petrol station, with dozens of rioters on the street, it could have just happened, according to the petrol station owner.

“One day it goes wrong. Then they hit a vent pipe, for example, and one of those big Cobra comes in.” Van der Wende is obviously not waiting for a time when fire does reach the 20,000 litre fuel supply. As such, the pumping station has to go as soon as the contract expires and the 75-year-old, who once took over the business from his father, plans to quit.