News from Cologne Archive

For those of you who can't read German, here's a short summary of the News from Cologne's homepage:

One of the two missing men has been found dead, but there is still no trace of the 24-year-old student. Search for him is going on, but there seems to be no hope; the tracking dogs have been exchanged for tracking dogs trained to find corpses. Since the desaster has been seven days ago, it would need an enormous stroke of luck for him to survive. About 70 helpers are doing their best to help the specialists. Unlike the heap of rubble of the archive itself, the collapsed houses are unstable, hindering the search and making it very dangerous.

Recovery of the archive material is also done with a lot of hands - and some good news for a change: Some of the objects are in a surprisingly good condition; firemen have recovered a steel locker with old seals almost undamaged. During the night, there have been about 150 persons working to save archive material, including many archivists.
Cologne Fire Brigade says they want to try recovering all the archive material and will not quit before this is done. First predictions say that work on the archive ruins might take up to one year.

And finally, a short video of the place and rescue work:


Link: rheinvideo.de