Two killed in German hotel collapse, guests still buried

“The whole structure of the building looks like a house of cards,” described a civil protection official.

The tragedy took place late in the evening, while 14 people were in the building. A hotel partially collapsed during the night of Tuesday 7 to Wednesday 8 August, near Trier, in western Germany, killing two people and burying seven people. The two people who lost their lives are German, local emergency services confirmed in a press conference. They are a man, whose age has not been communicated, and a woman born in 1961.

The entire first floor of the building, located in the town of Kröv, about 50 kilometres east of Trier in Rhineland-Palatinate, collapsed for reasons that are still unknown. Trier’s chief prosecutor, Peter Fritzen, has opened an investigation, the German media reports. The Rhine Valley.

“We were able to make contact with the seven people buried and four of them were rescued with minor injuries, so it’s a miracle,” said Jörg Teusch, civil protection inspector. The three people still buried are “probably seriously injured” and the intervention teams are moving forward “carefully.” “The whole structure of the building resembles a house of cards,” he described.

Around 9am, a child, a man and two women were pulled out of the rubble by rescue workers. Among the survivors was a two-year-old child and his mother from Urk, a small town in the Netherlands. The father is still trapped under the rubble and seriously injured.

Five other people were able to get out on their own, while 31 nearby residents were evacuated. Rescue workers sent around 250 people to the scene.

An assessment will be made of the structure of the building, which dates from the 17th century and was extended in the 1980s with new floors.