Part of a hotel has collapsed in a winemaking town in western Germany leaving at least two people dead and several others trapped in the wreckage.
Four people were rescued hours after the incident in Kroev, a picturesque town on the Mosel River, when a storey of the Reichsschenke Zum Ritter Götz hotel collapsed at about 11pm local time yesterday.
Fourteen people were in the hotel at the time. Police said five were able to get out of the building unhurt, but another nine were trapped.
By early this morning, emergency services established that one person had died but they were not immediately able to recover the body. Germany media were later reporting that a second person had died.
Police said in a statement: “Eight people are still trapped in the building, some with serious injuries. The emergency services have contact with some of them.”
More than two hours later, authorities said they had rescued two women, a man and a two-year-old child, German news agency dpa reported.
Their conditions were not immediately clear.
Authorities reportedly said that one of the people trapped was a child, who was physically unhurt and in contact with emergency workers.
Images from the scene showed the building’s gable roof slanted backwards as emergency personnel tended to the victims.
Footage showed a woman being carried out of the building by an emergency worker, while in another a baby could be seen taken out of the damaged building.
A care centre has been set up for the injured and their relatives.
Regional public broadcaster SWR said witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.
Authorities evacuated 31 people from the area immediately around the damaged building. There was no immediate word on what caused the collapse.
Police said it was “an extremely demanding deployment, because emergency personnel can only enter the building with the greatest caution”.
They said that some 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists, were at the scene, as well as rescue dogs.
Kroev, with a population of 2,200, is on a picturesque section of the Mosel near the larger resort town of Traben-Trarbach.
