Part of a hotel in a winemaking town on the Mosel River in western Germany collapsed, leaving two people dead and two others still trapped in the wreckage hours later, authorities said Wednesday.
Fourteen people were in the hotel in Kroev when one story of the building collapsed at about 11 p.m. Tuesday. Police said five were able to get out of the building unhurt because they weren't in the part that collapsed. But others were trapped.
Rescuers were able to contact some of them by cellphone. But getting to them proved to be difficult because the collapse of one story left two ceilings lying on top of each other, according to Joerg Teusch, fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district.
“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," he said.
Five people were rescued Wednesday. Among the first to be saved was a 2-year-old child pulled out unharmed and the child’s mother, who was rescued with minor injuries. The child's father was rescued later.
“We all had tears in our eyes and I still feel the same now. The whole story has a very emotional component, because when we arrived, when we looked at the building, it looked like we weren’t taking anyone out,” Teusch said at a news conference.
Teusch said the cause of the structural collapse hasn't yet been determined.
The original hotel building is believed to date back to the 17th century, but additional stories were added around 1980, he said. He added that building work had taken place on Tuesday, but it wasn’t clear whether there was any link between that and the collapse.
Regional public broadcaster SWR said that witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.
The rescue operation involved 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists, as well as rescue dogs.
“There was no option (to use) stairs, house entrances, doors or windows, because they were simply no longer there,” Teusch said.
Authorities evacuated 21 people from three buildings immediately around the damaged hotel.
The hotel guests at the time of the collapse were largely German, apart from a Dutch family. Two Germans, a man and a woman, died.
Kroev is on a picturesque section of the Mosel near the larger resort town of Traben-Trarbach. It has about 2,200 inhabitants.