Paris airport terminal may have to be razed

THE flagship €750 million terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport may have to be razed after cracking sounds were heard yesterday where a roof collapse had killed four people 24 hours earlier.

Several dozen people working inside were evacuated and the building may now be razed, officials said.

Terminal 2E a complex made up of three linked structures has been indefinitely closed since a 98-foot section of the roof caved in on Sunday.

However, some airport staff have continued working inside. When cracking sounds were heard yesterday, about 30 personnel in offices and others in a nearby restaurant were evacuated, said airport director Rene Brun.

The airport staff will not be allowed back inside until an analysis is made, said

Mr Brun. Cracking and puffs of dust minutes before the Sunday accident proved a warning sign ahead of the collapse of the futuristic complex that opened just 11 months ago.

Reports of cracking noises could be particularly significant, because the area evacuated is a separate building from the tube-shaped boarding and waiting area where the roof partially collapsed. It is joined by small walkways. "We feared that there would be another problem," said Corinne Bokobza, spokeswoman for the airport authority, ADP. "We're taking no risks."

The building, the pride of the airport, could be razed if investigations prove it cannot be made safe, the head of the airport authority said yesterday.

Officials, meanwhile, lowered the death toll from five to four. They explained that sniffer dogs had at first appeared to locate two bodies in the rubble of concrete, steel and glass. However, only one body was found.

The body of one victim had been cut in two, a rescue official said,.

Two Chinese travellers were among the dead when a section of the vaulted roof of Terminal 2E collapsed. They were travelling from Shanghai to Mexico via Paris. Identities of the other victims were not immediately known.

Two investigations, administrative and judicial, were getting underway, and experts from some of the 400 companies that took part in the terminal's construction went to the scene.

One hypothesis under study is that the ground on which the terminal was built had settled.

The head of the airport authority said the investigations would help decide whether to simply scrap Terminal 2E.

"If all these rings that make up this terminal are beyond repair, we'll tear it all down, of course," said Pierre Graff, the president of the Paris airports authority. He was referring to steel rings that form a spine in the elongated, circular building.

Paul Andreu, the terminal's architect, was returning to Paris from Beijing, where he is working on a project to build the National Theatre of China.

After at least two construction delays, the €750m terminal, with slots for 17 aircraft, opened last June.