Two dead and several trapped after hotel collapses in Germany, with building teetering 'like house of cards'
7 August 2024, 14:54
A man and a woman have died, after a hotel collapsed in Germany, with several more people pulled out after being trapped for hours in the unstable wreckage.
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Fourteen people were in the hotel in the wine-making town of Kröv in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of south-western Germany, when one of the floors collapsed at about 11pm local time on Tuesday.
Five people escaped of their own accord and were unharmed. Nine were left trapped initially. Five were later rescued - among them a two-year-old child and their mother.
One more person remained trapped as of Wednesday afternoon.
Some 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists and rescue dog workers, rushed to the scene.
Emergency services workers pulled out the body of a woman, but the body of a man remained inside on Wednesday afternoon because the building is too unstable.
The cause of the collapse remains unclear. Locals reported hearing a loud bang and a cloud of dust.
Chief rescue worker Joerg Teusch told reporters: "We have to proceed with caution because the entire building structure is like a house of cards. If we pull on the wrong card, this building is sure to collapse.
"There was no option [to use] stairs... entrances, doors or windows, because they were simply no longer there."
He added: "We all had tears in our eyes and I still feel the same now... because when we arrived, when we looked at the building, it looked like we weren't taking anyone out".
Police said in a statement: "Due to the nature of the damage, this is an extremely demanding deployment, because emergency personnel can only enter the building with the greatest caution".
