Strong winds hit the Eemhavenweg area of the Port of Rotterdam on the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 15, a pile of containers to topple and crushing four parked vehicles.

According to witnesses, no one was in the vehicles at the time of the incident.

The fire quickly sealed off the scene, deployed cranes to remove the overturned containers, and warned that there was still a risk of other containers toppling during the storm. The road section involved remained closed for clean-up operations.

KNMI, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, issued a yellow weather warning for strong gusts across the country's areas, indicating that strong winds were expected on that day.

Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and Europe's largest port, serving as the terminus of the Euro-Asian land bridge (with the eastern terminus being the city of Lianyungang in China). It is located at the confluence the Rhine and Maas rivers in Europe. In the first half of 2025, the Port of Rotterdam saw a 4.1% decrease in total throughput, reaching 211 million tons. The largest reductions were in dry bulk (-8.9%) and liquid bulk (-5.3%). Container throughput, however, a year-on-year increase of 2.7% (in terms of standard boxes).