Landslide

A married couple, aged 48 and 51, and another man aged 50 went missing when their homes collapsed into a man-made lake on the site of a former open-cast mine in Nachterstedt, around 170 kilometers south-west of Berlin.

The German army sent an underground search unit to the area on Monday, but the team wasn't able to reach the site where the victims are thought to be buried.

The interior minister of Saxony-Anhalt told a press conference that it would "not be technically possible, and would be irresponsible, to send rescue services in."

The entire settlement bordering on Lake Concordia has been sealed off, as further cracks in the ground discovered on Monday have raised fears of another landslide.

"Further ruptures can't be ruled out," said a spokesman from the company formerly in charge of the mine area, Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbauverwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV).

The victims were swept to their deaths at 4:40 a.m. on Saturday morning when a tract of ground some 350 meters wide suddenly collapsed 100 meters into the lake, ripping some of the nearby homes in half and leaving others perched precariously on an unstable cliff.

On Monday, experts said that a rise in ground-water levels at the site may have caused the disaster. The Concordia coal mine had advanced to 120 meters from the nearest home when it was closed in 1991 and flooded.

Fourth missing person found

Some of the residents of the village were allowed back into their homes on Monday for 30 minutes to collect personal belongings.

"I just grabbed things randomly," resident Norbert Pullner told German news agency DPA. "Bank papers, ID cards, pension documents. I couldn't think straight."

A fourth person thought to be missing in the landslide showed up alive and well on Sunday. The man, 22, was registered as a resident of one of the homes that vanished into the mud, but he in fact lived elsewhere. He contacted officials the day after the tragedy.

The land collapse at Nachterstedt has raised concerns about the safety of flooding former coal mines to create recreational lakes. Residents living near former mines in the Rhineland have appealed to local authorities to reconsider plans to flood the sites, and are calling for the massive craters to instead be filled in with land.

Geologists employed by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia have reassured residents that they needn't fear a similar occurrence to that in Saxony-Anhalt, as residential areas in NRW are built at a safer distance from the mines' edges than was the case in Nachterstedt.

Mine operator RWE-Power has also advised people living near old mines not to panic.

"It's definitely not dangerous," said company spokesman Lothar Lambertz. He added that the outer embankments were constantly being monitored so that any problems could be identified in time for any necessary measures to be taken.

dc/dpa/afp/ap

Editor: Susan Houlton