In the pedestrian zone of Eschweiler, mannequins lie in a sea of broken glass, with a red high-heeled woman’s shoe between them. A massive explosion at a residential and commercial building injured 16 people in the northeastern city of Aachen late on Thursday.
Two of them, including a baby a few weeks old, are in danger of dying, a police spokesman in Aachen said on Friday morning. Another four people were seriously injured, ten were classified as lightly injured.
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Some of the injured had “severe burns”, a spokesman for the fire department said. Police and firefighters assumed a gas explosion in the multi-storey house. The force of the detonation shattered all windowpanes within a 50 meter radius. The shops in front of the house from which the blast wave came were also in ruins.
The explosion also started a fire that kept a large contingent of firefighters in the region busy for hours. Police and firefighters received support from the Eschweiler Technical Relief Agency. The fire was extinguished around 2 am. However, embers were later discovered. About 200 forces were mobilized.
The fire brigade assumes a gas explosion in the multi-storey house. © Federico Gambarini/dpa
The explosion was recorded around 9:15 pm on Thursday night. Adjacent houses were also badly damaged by its force. Now it must be checked whether the accident house itself or neighboring houses are at risk of collapsing. Until then, residents will not be able to return to their homes. The number of evacuees was still unclear at night.
Authorities assume an accident
“There were still no structural engineers at the houses,” said a spokesman for the fire department. The Eschweiler fire department raised the alarm and called for backup from firefighters in neighboring towns. “It was a very big operation,” said a police spokesman.
Authorities assumed it was an accident. So far, there is no evidence of foul play, he said. The crash site was cordoned off over a wide area. Fire experts entered the affected house as little as a structural engineer said at night. The “Aachener Zeitung” had already reported the explosion.
Eschweiler is located between Aachen, Cologne and the northern Eifel. The city has almost 56,000 inhabitants. The last major disaster there was not so long ago: in July 2021, the flood hit the city.
The Eschweiler hospital alone, which had to be evacuated in a dramatic rescue operation, suffered €120 million in damage. With 1,400 employees, the hospital is the city’s largest employer. (dpa)
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