German hotel collapse in Moselle wine valley kills two, one guest still trapped

By Alex Kraus and Rachel More

KROEV, Germany/BERLIN (Reuters) -A hotel in Germany’s picturesque Moselle wine valley collapsed overnight, killing two people, local police said on Wednesday, as rescuers worked urgently to extricate one remaining guest who was trapped in the rubble.

One woman’s body was recovered but emergency responders have not yet been able to reach the body of the second victim, a male, rescue operation chief Joerg Teusch told reporters.

Six people were rescued during the day in a complex operation as the two-storey building was unstable after its upper floor caved in late on Tuesday, said police and rescuers.

Prosecutors said construction work had taken place on the building on Tuesday. The hotel was built in the 17th century and renovated in the 1980s.

The one person still stuck in the building – identified by a Reuters witness as the Reichsschenke “Zum Ritter Goetz” – has serious injuries but is in touch with rescuers, said police.

Among those rescued was a two-year-old child, who was not injured, and the child’s parents, with whom rescuers were able to establish contact overnight.

“I have never been so happy to see a stranger’s child,” Teusch said, describing the tearful moment when his team carried the toddler from the damaged building.

The cause of the collapse was unclear.

However, state prosecutor Peter Fritzen said his office had opened an investigation to determine whether there was any indication that the two deaths were caused by a third party. The probe would also look into details of Tuesday’s building work.

SUMMER SEASON

Some 250 police officers, firefighters and paramedics were deployed to the site in the town of Kroev, a popular holiday town surrounded by the steep, vineyard-covered banks of the river Moselle.

Emergency services used a crane and sniffer dogs to assist the operation.

The incident comes during the busy summer season, when the region’s historic wine taverns are often full of tourists.

The hotel that partially collapsed is named after a medieval knight who is said to have once drunk at its wood-panelled tavern and was immortalised in a play by Wolfgang von Goethe.

Investigators believe 14 people were in the hotel when the upper floor caved in, five of whom escaped without injury.

Police also said 21 people in homes near the hotel had to be evacuated, revising down their earlier figure.

(Additional reporting by Alex Kraus in Kroev, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Katharina Loesche and Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Writing by Rachel More; Editing by Tom Hogue, Bernadette Baum, William Maclean)