The Cologne city Archives collapsed last week – and I blogged about the tragic event at that time. Since then, my friend, Donna Potter Phillips, has been corresponding with a friend (Cookie), who lives near Frankfurt. The following is an email sent to Donna from Cookie. The “animation” she speaks of can be found at the following website: http://www.wdr.de/mediathek/html/regional/2009/03/10/aktuelle-stunde-retter.xml Note that numerous news articles about the tragedy can be found there. Just begin clicking on links and all kinds of graphics – along with text (in German) are available.
I know for some of you this will be hard to understand as it is in German, but you can catch a lot of the story
visually – about the terrible collapse of the Cologne city archives last week. The animation helps to understand what happened.
All along this new route where a tunnel is being built for a new Underground train line, water has been pumped out, walls built to secure the earthen foundations, etc. Only on this section a lot has gone wrong – a church steeple started to lean (they propped it up and fixed the foundation), ceilings in Romanesque churches have developed cracks and many houses show structural damage.
Last Tuesday five of the workers below in the tunnel along Severinstrasse saw a crack getting larger, heard movement, then ran upstairs, stopped traffic and warned people in the immediate area to not come closer (another man operating the crane stopped work and ran inside of the archive bldg. to get everyone out – he saved between 60 and 70 lives that way – minutes later the building collapsed. He is the “hero” mentioned in the report. It shook him up so badly he couldn’t talk about it to the press or anyone. You can see what happened in the animation. The firm that was working the equipment on that section of the underground line project comes from Hessen.
Two lives were lost in this disaster – a young student and a bakery worker, both of whom lived in the top story of the left-hand apartment next door. Only one has been found so far.
As for the archives, only about 10% of documents have been salvaged so far – it will take a long time to sort out and preserve what was dampened. It is all mixed up with belongings from the neighboring apartments – and other apartments are set to be demolished as they are so unstable.
Some estimate it will take as long as 30 years to do the job of restoring tens of thousands of city documents going back to the 15th century. Many have said on this day “a city lost its memory.” I just hope no other buildings are in for the same fate. Cracks are appearing in structures in several places along the new U-bahn route.
Same problems in Amsterdam’s historic center – where they are building underground tunnels for the trains and trams. A lot of people are angry because of all the damage – and it hurts the business in the historic center. Let’s hope the Dutch can handle the water – something they have been good at in the past – and it isn’t a “tunnel too far.”
Love, Cookie
Thanks to Donna for sharing this with us.