Rescuers halt search for skating rink survivors

Rescuers tonight halted their search for people feared trapped for more than a full day under the fallen roof of a skating rink in south-eastern Germany, concerned that the ruins could collapse again.

The painstaking work, digging by hand and using specially trained dogs, could not resume, officials said, meaning another freezing night for anyone left alive under the rubble.

Still, rescuers insisted they had not given up hope for four missing people.

An expert survey showed “that it would be irresponsible for more rescue workers to go in,” said George Grabner, a local councillor for the region around Bad Reichenhall, where at least 11 people died in Monday’s accident, including six children.

Officials said they hoped to resume the search with the assistance of more specialised equipment, expected to arrive this evening.

The huge wooden crossbeams that had held up the ceiling had to be lifted out, they said.

The work was expected to last through the night and officials hoped the rescue operation would resume by dawn tomorrow.

“As soon as it is possible, we will continue to work with dogs and helpers into the area to find the people who are still in the wreckage,” local fire official Rudi Zeif said.

Still missing were a 35-year-old woman and three children between the ages of 12 and 16.

No one had been found alive since before midnight Monday, when a five-year-old girl was found with only minor injuries, and Zeif said there had been no signs of life or calls for help since then.

Two bodies were carried from the wreckage just past noon (11am Irish time).

Officials said they would keep going until all were accounted for. “We will continue the search until we have rescued or recovered all the missing,” Zeif said.

Some 18 people were seriously injured in the collapse, which occurred Monday at 4pm (5pm Irish time) just as the rink was about to close for the day.

Schools were still on Christmas break and about 50 people were in the building at the time.

A memorial service was planned for early next week.

All the victims were Germans, officials said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday expressed her “deep sympathy” for the victims, praising the efforts of rescuers who were in “a race against time” to find any survivors.

“I would like to express my deep sympathy in the name of the entire government,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin.

Bavarian Governor Edmund Stoiber toured the rescue site and expressed his sympathy as well, describing the scene as “shocking, I’ve got no words for it.”

Prosecutors launched an investigation for possible negligence, an automatic step after a fatal accident. People in the town expressed angry suspicions.

“There’s something rotten about this. We’ve had a lot more snow than this before,” retiree Erna Schweiger-Nolte said as she stood outside the police cordon. “The politicians say, ’save, save, save,’ but it shouldn’t be on the wrong things.”

She said it was “well known” that the building, erected in the 1972, was in poor shape and leaking.

Suspicions were fuelled by news that an official with the town’s ice hockey club said he had been told by town authorities 30 minutes before the accident that a regular practice session for youth players later in the day was cancelled because there was a risk of the facility collapsing.

Local officials said there had been a roughly 20cm layer of snow on the roof, which Mayor Wolfgang Heitmeier said was well within the building’s margin of safety. Nonetheless, town officials had planned to close it after the end of the day’s free skate.

Heitmeier said renovations had been discussed, but to the pool and rink equipment, not the structure itself, which was regarded as sound.

Several structural engineers expressed doubt that snow alone was the cause, and said such buildings should be inspected as they age, just as bridges are.

“No one would get on an aeroplane that wasn’t regularly maintained and checked,” engineer Carsten Koenke said.

Horst Franke, another engineer, said on N24 television that “it couldn’t just have been the snow.”

German meteorologists measured 45cm of fresh, wet snow on Monday in the Bavarian Alps, where Bad Reichenhall is located.

Bad Reichenhall, a town of some 15,000 people, is on the border with Austria and about 6 miles from the city of Salzburg.