Emergencies: Explosion destroys apartment building in Bochum – one dead

emergencies
Explosion destroys apartment building in Bochum – one dead

The fire brigade and rescue workers are standing in front of the collapsed house in the Linden district of Bochum. photo

© Markus Gayk/TNN/dpa

Bochum, Tuesday evening: With a loud bang, an apartment building in the Linden district is dismantled. A pile of rubble remains. Any help comes too late for a woman. How could that happen?

Dramatic search without a happy ending: a woman was killed when a house in Bochum collapsed. After searching for several hours, rescuers found them in the rubble. The body is believed to be the 61-year-old homeowner who was missing, a police spokesman said early in the morning. More details will only be clear when the dead person has been recovered and clearly identified.

The apartment building in the Linden district collapsed completely last night after an explosion. Photos showed the extent of the destruction: where the two-and-a-half-storey building stood, only a pile of rubble could be seen after the accident. The road was littered with stones. A short time later, numerous neighbors called 911 and reported a loud bang.

No more missing

Aside from the owner, two other people lived in the house, police said. One of them was able to free himself from the rubble and was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. The third was not at home.

Other people are no longer suspected under the rubble, said fire brigade operations manager Simon Heussen in the morning. Rescue dogs would have struck in several places. These places were checked without result. The recovery of the corpse and the clean-up work could last until the morning. The fire brigade, rescue service, rescue dog squadrons and technical relief organization (THW) were at the scene of the accident with 160 emergency services.

Danger from unstable debris

The cause of the alleged explosion was initially unclear. According to the Stadtwerke, the building had no gas connection, Heußen said. Nevertheless, gas was measured in the canal and in nearby buildings. It is therefore assumed that there was a gas leak there.

Heussen had previously described the situation as dramatic in a video on Twitter. There were therefore two dangers for the rescue workers: On the one hand, the debris was very unstable, there was a further danger of collapse. Therefore, one could not enter the site at first. In addition, gas was still detectable during the operation. The public utilities were therefore on site with excavators to close the valves of the gas lines in the streets.

dpa

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