Rescue workers recovered another body from the wreckage of a collapsed skating rink in southern Germany early on Wednesday, police said, raising the death toll to 12.
Police spokesperson Anton Fischer said the victim was male, but did not give further details. The body was found after rescue crews and dogs resumed their search of the debris following a lengthy break forced by fears that the wrecked roof could collapse further.
Another three people were still believed trapped under the rubble in the Alpine spa town of Bad Reichenhall. Hopes were fading of finding survivors from Monday’s accident at the end of a second night of snow and freezing temperatures.
Officials said on Tuesday that those still missing were a 40-year-old woman and three children aged 12 to 16. Six children were among those already confirmed dead.
The roof collapsed after heavy snowfall on Monday afternoon with about 50 people inside, including many children on Christmas break from school.
On Tuesday afternoon, rescue efforts were halted after one of the collapsed ceiling crossbeams shifted and put pressure on a remaining wall, leading to fears that the ruined and steeply tilted roof could collapse further.
Special cranes were brought in to clear the way, and workers spent the night tearing away pieces of the facade and the remains of the roof. The rescue crews were able to enter the building a little before 4am local time.
Officials would not predict when the last missing people might be recovered.
However, fire official Rudi Zeif pledged on Tuesday that ”we will continue the search until we have rescued or recovered all the missing”.
Asked if they could still be alive, he said earthquake victims had survived for several days.
Pumping warm air into the area was considered, but ruled out because it could melt snow, leaving any survivors wet and colder than before. Rescuers hoped the snow could produce an ”igloo effect” that might create relatively warm pockets of air.
Rescuers using dogs, shovels and their hands found a five-year-old girl with only minor injuries late on Monday, but had found no one alive and heard no calls for help since then.
Several hundred people gathered on Tuesday for a candlelight vigil at the town hall, and church bells pealed for 20 minutes.
Prosecutors launched an investigation for possible negligence, an automatic step after a fatal accident.
All the victims came from the area around Bad Reichenhall, a town of 15 000 inhabitants on the Austrian border. People in the town questioned why a public building could not withstand a heavy but predictable snowfall.
”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 1972, was in poor shape and leaking.
Experts suggested a structural flaw was a more likely cause than the heavy snow that fell on Monday.
Suspicions were fuelled by news that an official with the town’s ice-hockey club said local authorities told him 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 collapse.
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 safety margin.
Nonetheless, town officials had planned to close it after the end of the day’s public skating because the snow was continuing. — Sapa-AP