Archief Building rocked in Colgne (5)

February 24, 2009 - 3:42 PM


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A tragedy was narrowly averted in St Gallen when the snow-covered roof of a vocational school gymnasium collapsed shortly before early morning classes on Tuesday.

No one was injured after the collapse of the sports facility, which was empty at the time of the accident. It was constructed in 2006 at a cost of SFr11 million ($9.46 million).

The cause of the accident, in which a wall also caved in, has not yet been established.

"We were very lucky," the school's principal, Lukas Reichle, said after the accident. "A great weight was lifted off my heart when I heard that no one was injured."

Three-quarters of an hour later there would have been 60 to 80 young people attending a gymnastic class in the hall.

As a precautionary measure, snow has been cleared from the roofs of all public halls in the canton of St Gallen in eastern Switzerland.

This happened here in CH in February.
Probably none of the Builders reckoned the amount of Snowfall that could occur.


Nine missing as Cologne archives collapse



2 hrs 55 mins ago

COLOGNE, Germany (AFP) – Up to nine people were missing on Tuesday after the building containing Cologne's historical archives and an adjacent apartment block collapsed, German officials said.

"There is an eyewitness report that a married couple was seen at the window of the apartment block when it collapsed. There have also been indications that seven other people could be missing," Cologne city hall said.

The four-storey archive building in the west German city centre was evacuated shortly before it caved in just before 2:00 pm (1300 GMT), city hall spokesman Gregor Timmer told AFP at the scene.

The head of Cologne's fire brigade Stephan Neuhoff said that nobody was injured and that the evacuation took place after the building started making strange noises, the city's statement added.

There were around 250 rescue workers at the scene as well as 86 fire engines and sniffer dogs. A third building was also badly damaged, Timmer said.

Susanne Vandenberg told WDR television she was having a coffee inside the archives when people started shouting.

"We all ran out of the archives. I turned round and the front of the building started to collapse, the first windows started falling down. So I started to run. There was a huge cloud of dust behind me."

The archives house 65,000 original documents dating from the year 922 as well as maps, films and photos and items left to the city by figures like composer Jacques Offenbach and Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Boell.

The building that collapsed has been in use as an archive since 1971.

News reports said that the disaster may have been caused by renovations taking place on the city's metro line in the area, but a spokeswoman for the city said that the work had finished.

"There was no work taking place directly underneath the building," a spokesman for the metro operator said on NTV. "As far as I know there was no building work taking place that could have caused this to happen."