80 people evacuated as building in Germany threatens to collapse

DPA
·2 min read
Barriers can be seen in front of an apartment building in Essen. Some 80 people in the western German city of Essen had to leave their homes during the night because the safety of their building could not be guaranteed, a spokesman for the Essen fire brigade said on Saturday morning. Christoph Reichwein/dpa
Barriers can be seen in front of an apartment building in Essen. Some 80 people in the western German city of Essen had to leave their homes during the night because the safety of their building could not be guaranteed, a spokesman for the Essen fire brigade said on Saturday morning. Christoph Reichwein/dpa

Some 80 people in the western German city of Essen had to leave their homes during the night because the safety of their building could not be guaranteed, a spokesman for the Essen fire brigade said on Saturday morning.

Underneath the multi-storey building in Essen's Freisenbruch district is an access to a former mining gallery, spokesman Nico Blum explained.

After several drilling probes, it is suspected that the backfill of the access is not in the condition it should be. As a result, the stability of the building is no longer guaranteed, Blum said.

"Around 30 people have been housed in emergency accommodation," said Blum, adding that the rest were accommodated with friends and relatives.

The operation began at around 10 pm (2000 GMT) on Friday and ended at around 3 am on Saturday. The fire brigade assumes that people will not be able to return to their homes for weeks.

Several thousand kilometres of shafts and tunnels run through the earth in the Ruhr region, formerly Germany's mining heartland, with frequent collapses as a result of damage from mining activity that appears on the surface.

In 2000, a 500-square-metre crater appeared in a residential area of the Wattenscheid district of the city of Bochum and two garages sank into it.

Boreholes can be seen in front of an apartment building in Essen. Some 80 people in the western German city of Essen had to leave their homes during the night because the safety of their building could not be guaranteed, a spokesman for the Essen fire brigade said on Saturday morning. Christoph Reichwein/dpa
Boreholes can be seen in front of an apartment building in Essen. Some 80 people in the western German city of Essen had to leave their homes during the night because the safety of their building could not be guaranteed, a spokesman for the Essen fire brigade said on Saturday morning. Christoph Reichwein/dpa