Giant ‘choco-pancake’ forms in German street after chocolate leaks from factory

They say the streets of heaven are paved with gold — but how about a street paved in chocolate?

For a moment, it was the sweet reality of the German town of Werl when a storage tank of oozy, delicious liquid chocolate sprang a leak and seeped a small river of its contents onto the street Monday, according to a local fire brigade.

“A chocolate tank in the building had overflowed. About a ton of chocolate ran out into the yard and from there onto the street,” a spokesman for fire brigade wrote in a translated statement. “On the street, which had to be closed until about 10 pm, a ten-square-meter choco-pancake formed.”

The sweet spill hardened in the winter weather, forming a thick coating. The chocolate had come from a DreiMeister candy factory, a business specializing in fine chocolates, according to the brigade.

The reason for the mishap was a small “technical” problem and was quickly fixed, DreiMeister CEO Markus Luckey said, according to the German newspaper Soester Anzeiger. Lucky for the company, because having to stop production around the holidays would have been a “catastrophe,” he said, according to the paper.

The firefighters broke out shovels and scooped up as much of the chocolate that they could, helping to “eliminate the sweet danger with shovels and muscle power,” according to the department.

After that, a special cleaning company was brought out with hot water and blow torches to melt and clean the rest of the chocolate that had seeped deep into the road, according to Soester Anzeiger.

But the firefighters said there was no need to fret about whether there would be enough chocolate to make it through the tough winter months.

“Despite the heartbreaking incident, it is unlikely that a chocolate-free Christmas is imminent in Werl,” the brigade wrote.

It’s not the first chocolatey mishap this year. In May, a tanker carrying a batch of liquid chocolate overturned in Poland, covering a highway in 12 tons of sticky goo, according to The New York Times.