Update on Collapsed Archive Building in Cologne

As I mentioned in a recent post, the archives building in Cologne, Germany collapsed last week burying people and tons of irreplaceable documents under a pile of rubble. Since learning of this tragic event, I’ve tried to find some follow-up information about the missing people and the condition of the documents. Information in English continues to be scare, but I did find an article in DW-World reporting that a 17-year-old apprentice baker is the only confirmed death so far. The apprentice was asleep in an apartment complex that collapsed along with the adjacent archives building. A 24-year-old design student, also a resident of the apartment complex, is still missing. As for the documents: “Trucks hauled away to safety those manuscripts that were not damaged because they were in an annex, while firemen used their bare hands to recover individual documents from the rubble.” Clearly, certain documents will be entirely irrecoverable or severely damaged.