Three people remained missing early on Tuesday after a residential building collapsed in the eastern German city of Görlitz, with authorities investigating a possible gas explosion as the cause, police said.
Two of the five people initially reported missing were located shortly after midnight and were unharmed, a police spokeswoman said. Emergency crews continued searching through the night for possible victims trapped beneath the rubble.
The multi-storey building collapsed near Görlitz railway station on Monday evening. Police said three people still could not be reached and may have been inside the building when it collapsed.
Authorities said a gas explosion may have occurred in the apartment block, though the exact cause of the collapse had not yet been determined. Rescue workers had to proceed with caution as gas continued to leak from the site. The leak was located beneath the rubble and could not currently be repaired for technical reasons, the spokeswoman said.
She added that measuring devices were being used continuously to monitor gas concentrations in the air, but that another explosion was not expected.
A man who feared his wife and cousin could be trapped under the rubble told dpa he had heard an explosion while shopping at a nearby supermarket. The three had arrived earlier in the day to stay in a holiday flat in the building, he said. When he returned from the supermarket, he found only a huge pile of rubble where the building had stood.
The area around the collapse site was evacuated and cordoned off after the incident. Police, firefighters and disaster response teams were deployed to the scene.
According to police, the building contained both rental and holiday flats. The city's public order office said the property belonged to housing company KommWohnen, a subsidiary of the city of Görlitz.
