A small hotel in the scenic Mosel region of Germany collapsed late on Tuesday, killing two people and prompting a frantic effort to rescue guests from under the rubble, the local authorities said.
Rescue teams were working on Wednesday to extract one person who was still trapped underneath the crumbled building in Kröv, a small city in southwest Germany, near the Luxembourg border. Six others who were caught in the collapse had been rescued.
A spokesman for the police in Trier, a nearby city, said that the trapped person did not appear to be seriously injured, and that the rescue team was able to communicate with them via cellphones and directional microphones.
“It’s complicated because of the danger posed by the moving parts of the building,” he said. “This is the problem. Our priority is to save lives.”
The hotel, which dates back to at least the 18th century, collapsed late Tuesday when its second floor suddenly gave way while 14 people were inside, Stefanie Rodermund, a spokeswoman for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district, said. After firefighters arrived, five guests managed to escape quickly and unscathed, while six were later extracted, and two died.
“The second floor had collapsed onto the first floor, causing the middle floor to disappear,” said Ms. Rodermund.
Joerg Teusch, the fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district who led the rescue operation, said at a news conference on Wednesday morning that workers had recovered the body of a female victim and were still trying to retrieve the body of a man who had been killed in the collapse. Ms. Rodermund said that one of the people killed was a manager of the hotel, and that it appeared the two victims had died instantly.
“The entire building structure resembles a house of cards,” Mr. Teusch said. “If you pull the wrong card, the building will surely collapse.”
Ms. Rodermund said that 250 people were on the ground early on Wednesday afternoon, including those from the fire brigade and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief, as well as special forces and a rescue dog squad. The accident site is also being investigated using drones.
It is still unclear why the building partially collapsed.
One of those rescued after they were trapped in the rubble had sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries, including broken bones.
A Dutch family, including a 2-year-old child and their parents, was among people who were rescued unharmed from the collapsed hotel.
The Reichsschenke Zum Ritter Götz hotel, named after a popular medieval knight, is situated in Kröv along the Mosel River, according to the hotel’s website. The basic structure of the building dates back to the 18th century, though floors were added in the 1980s, Ms. Rodermund said. Other sources, including Mr. Teusch and media reports, said the building dated back as far as the 17th century.
The chief public prosecutor in Trier will investigate whether there was a failure in the old building’s substructure. Construction work was being done on the building yesterday, though it remained unclear whether that work was related to the collapse.
Ms. Rodermund said that such a collapse was far from typical for the area.
“This is absolutely unusual,” she said. “We haven’t had such an incident in a long time.”
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