POLAND: At least 20 people killed and 100 injured in Poland after roof collapse at an exhibition hall.

Record ID: 216500

  • Title: POLAND: At least 20 people killed and 100 injured in Poland after roof collapse at an exhibition hall.
  • Date: 29th January 2006
  • Summary: (W5) CHORZOW, POLAND (JANUARY 28, 2006) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Polish) UNIDENTIFIED INJURED MAN SAYING: "The roof collapsed within seconds. Nobody even had time to panic. It started to collapse from the front and went on so people further down managed to escape. I only heard cries for help, everybody was shouting. People were helping each other out when they could. I got
  • Embargoed: 13th February 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Poland
  • Country: Poland
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA1ZOKOK7VKJQIA08DMW6DIRBF2
  • Story Text: At least 20 people have died after a roof collapsed at an exhibition hall in the southern Polish city of Chorzow. More than a hundred other people were injured. Ambulances rushed them to hospital. The hall was packed when the roof, the size of a football pitch and laden with snow, caved in. One woman's father was trapped under the wreckage and spoke to her using his mobile phone. "He told me that...(inaudible) he is in sector 45-46. The rescuers have not reached them yet. There are people there covered in blood, pinned down. There are people moaning and screaming. There are a lot of people there," Aleksandra Bochynek told Reuters Television, visibly shaken. One fire officer said about 100 people might be trapped under the rubble of the centre where an international meeting of pigeon enthusiasts had attracted people from all over Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Ukraine. "The roof collapsed within seconds. Nobody even had time to panic. It started to collapse from the front and went on so people further down managed to escape. I only heard cries for help, everybody was shouting. People were helping each other out when they could. I got out myself but couldn't help anybody," said one survivor. Emergency crews were working to free people from under the rubble in freezing conditions. The injured were rushed to hospitals in the industrial region while rescuers fought their way through the metal roof debris under floodlighting. One man lay pinned under a section of the corrugated iron roof of the building, a modern steel structure, only his head and shoulders visible. Polish television said rescuers were in mobile telephone contact with some people under the wreckage. "I don't know how this happened. It was a loud bang for two seconds and then we were all lying on the ground," said survivor Yolanta Czekalska. Her daughter, who also escaped with injuries, said it all happened so suddenly. "I saw it. All of a sudden everything started shooting down. We thought that one of the booths was falling down and then I saw that to the right the roof started to collapse. We ran to the exit and I felt something hit me in the back and I fell down. I managed to get out through a small hole. We were all lying on top of each other," said Magdalena Czekalska. "All of my friends are alive." Temperatures plunged to minus 15 degrees celsius in one of Poland's coldest winters in decades. The show of racing pigeons, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, attracted participants from Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Ukraine as well as Poland, according to its website. Nearly 1,000 police, fire fighters and military gendarmes are involved in the rescue. The worst injured were carried on stretchers by rescuers who had to lug heavy metal cutting equipment over snowy ground. Fire fighters with dogs trained to find victims beneath wreckage have been sent from the neighbouring province of Malopolska to help in the rescue effort. A witness said that as much as one-and-a-half metres of snow may have been on the roof of the exhibit hall. A cold snap has knocked temperatures to as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) in parts of Europe. Earlier this month, 15 people died at an ice skating rink in the town of Bad Reichenhall in southern Germany when a roof collapsed under the weight of fallen snow. All but three of the dead were children. Czech rescue officials said a woman was injured the same week when the roof of a supermarket collapsed under the weight of snow.
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