Around two days after the dramatic house collapse in the Saxon town of Görlitz, the body of a woman was found in the rubble.
May 21, 2026, 04:26May 21, 2026, 07:06
A police spokeswoman said it was the previously missing 25-year-old Romanian tourist. The search is still ongoing for the other two missing people.
A house collapsed in the German city of Görlitz.Image: screenshot x
Emergency services found the buried person in the rubble around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the spokeswoman said that night. The work was then stopped for the time being. An emergency doctor pronounced the person dead and the body was recovered. The criminal police have secured traces and are investigating.
The search for the two other missing people continued during the night. Sniffer dogs are supposed to help find them. They had already struck in several places, as the spokeswoman reported.
The house, which according to the police contained rental and holiday apartments, collapsed on Monday evening for reasons that are still unclear. As a result, five people were initially missing, the whereabouts of two of them were clarified after just a few hours – the two holiday guests were still on their way.
Race against time
Another Romanian tourist aged 26 and a 48-year-old man with Bulgarian and German citizenship are now missing. The search for them was tireless, and the emergency services sometimes worked their way through the mountain of rubble with shovels and their bare hands.
It was a race against time. The Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) announced: “The so-called “golden rescue time” is usually in the first 24 to 72 hours – the chances of survival are highest during this period,” explained Andrea Wirth from the THW regional association Saxony, Thuringia.
Several wheel loaders, excavators and cranes were also used to recover debris. The strain on the emergency services themselves was high. There is a lot of dust and people have to wear protective masks all the time, said THW operations management spokesman Daniel Hofmann.
Cause still unclear
The exact cause of the accident in the city in eastern Saxony is still not clear. “But it looks like a gas explosion,” said Görlitz Mayor Octavian Ursu (CDU). According to police, a gas leak was found a few hours after the Wilhelminian style house collapsed.
This also made the work of the emergency services more difficult because it was suspected that gas was leaking from under the rubble. On Wednesday night, the gas pipes around the accident site were completely emptied. This reduces the risk of explosion and makes the work less dangerous, said a police spokeswoman.
The search was interrupted for security reasons. According to the spokeswoman, despite the gas pipes being emptied, there may still be cavities with gas.
Not much can be seen of the house anymore. “The rubble is piled up to about the second floor. And it is actually a pile of rubble, the kind you would imagine on a large demolition site,” said Hofmann from THW.
Easternmost city in Germany
Görlitz is the easternmost city in Germany. It is located in Upper Lusatia in Saxony directly on the Neisse and has 57,000 inhabitants. Since 1998, Görlitz, together with its eastern Polish neighboring town of Zgorzelec, has formed a cross-border European city. Because of the historic, undestroyed old town backdrop, the city is also a sought-after filming location for international film productions.
The collapsed Wilhelminian style house was on James-von-Moltke-Strasse near the Görlitz train station. The area around the house was largely evacuated and cordoned off after the collapse. (sda/dpa)