When something notable happens here in Germany, I try to make  few comments on it. This time around, I’m not really sure what to think. A building in Cologne containing the city’s historical archives collapsed yesterday. It contained 65,000 original documents dating from the year 922 as well as maps, films and photos and items left to the city by figures like composer Jacques Offenbach and Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Böll.

There’s really not much left to the building or several of them beside it. It was supposedly one very large building that housed the archives and apartments. As you can see, there really isn’t much left.

There are still two people thought to be missing, a couple who lived in one of the apartments. They brought in the Search & Rescue dogs and they have been searching since yesterday. The chances of anyone actually surviving in there seem slim though. Every time we see the SAR dogs we have to think about wanting to train Ayla for search & rescue. Unfortunately it’s almost a full time job, requiring several hours during the week and a full day of weekend training fairly regularly. We can barely keep up with all that we need to get done now, so that pipe dream quickly moved to the back burner. It still would be cool though – look at them in their little suits. And how cool would it be to see a Newfie tromping around there? Yeah, perhaps more dangerous for her too since she’s so heavy but I think she would love it. She’s already part mountain goat. A bit too fearless really.

There is some talk that a subway station they were building near this might be to blame, but that’s being rather hotly debated. Some working inside the building believed the collapse was going to happen for a long while now. Cracks were visible in the cellar of the building since last summer and apparenttly things really started to look bad in the last few weeks. Something occurred within the building yesterday that actually triggered the employees inside that they needed to evacuate. That actually shows you that government employees CAN be motivated; you just have to find the right catalyst.

This is one of the apartment buildings next to the archives – you can see the blue carpet hanging out of the pink house on the left in the photo at the top. Just incredible to think that someone might actually have been sitting in their kitchen when the place started to tumble down. It’s amazing that more people didn’t get hurt in all the chaos.

Officials are  now saying they are going to put huge tarps over the ruins to help protect whatever documents remain. What I have to wonder is why someone didn’t say, “Hey, there’s a huge crack in the foundation, things are looking a bit strange around here, maybe we should start pulling all the archives out of here.” They might have even managed to get most of the documents moved before the building fell down. Or perhaps some sort of supports could have been fashioned to keep the building from collapsing?

I don’t know – but something seems fishy in the city of Cologne.