Three missing after German house falls into lake
Berlin - Three residents were missing in Germany after their lakeside home and another building suddenly collapsed early Saturday into the water. A 350-metre stretch of shoreline gave way next to an old open-cast coalmine converted to a lake in the small town of Nachterstedt, 170 kilometres south-west of Berlin.
A county spokeswoman said emergency services were unable to move rescue vehicles up to the scene for fear that more of the shoreline of Lake Concordia would slip.
She said those missing, all aged about 50, were a married couple and another man. But it was uncertain if one of them had been at home at the time of the landslip.
They lived in a semi-detached house which had been 120 metres from the shorline. It disappeared under the surface of the lake. A road and half of an apartment building had also collapsed, but no one was home there.
Officials said there had been some rain, but this could not have caused such an earthslip.
They said it was more likely that mining had made the land unstable. The opencast mine ceased operations in 1991 after communism ended in East Germany and many local industries became uneconomic.
Nachterstedt is located close to the tourist destination of historic Quedlinburg.
