Two people have died and several others were trapped after a hotel in a German wine valley collapsed, .
Six people, including a two-year-old child and their parents, were rescued from the wreckage without serious injuries.
“I have never been so happy to see a stranger’s child,” rescue operation chief Joerg Teusch said of the tearful moment the toddler was rescued from the building.
By Wednesday evening, one person was believed to remain trapped at the site in the western town of Kroev, which sits within the steep banks of the river Moselle. But rescuers expected to reach them by sunset.
Fourteen people were in the hotel when one storey of the building collapsed at about 11pm local time on Tuesday (10pm BST).
Police said five were able to get out of the building unhurt because they were not in the part that collapsed, but others were left trapped.
Rescuers were able to contact some of them by mobile phone, but reaching them proved to be difficult because the collapse of one storey left two ceilings lying on top of each other, rescuers said.
Joerg Teusch, fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district, said: “We have to proceed with caution because the entire building structure is like a house of cards. If we pull on the wrong card, this building is sure to collapse.”
Among the first to be saved was a two-year-old child pulled out unharmed and the child’s mother, who was rescued with minor injuries. The child’s father was rescued later.
Mr Teusch said at a news conference: “We all had tears in our eyes and I still feel the same now. The whole story has a very emotional component, because when we arrived, when we looked at the building, it looked like we weren’t taking anyone out.”
A woman’s body was recovered but emergency responders have not yet reached the corpse of the second, male victim, Mr Teusch said.
Michael Ebling, interior minister in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where Kroev is located, said the fact that so many people could be rescued “stands out in view of this event, the damage and the dimensions one can see with the naked eye”.
The original hotel building is believed to date back to the 17th century, but additional storeys were added around 1980, Mr Teusch said. He added that building work had taken place on Tuesday, but it was not clear whether there was any link between that and the collapse.
Regional public broadcaster SWR said that witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.
250 police officers, firefighters and paramedics were called to the site in the popular holiday town, with cranes and sniffer dogs also employed to assist in the operation.
Mr Teusch said: “There was no option [to use] stairs, house entrances, doors or windows, because they were simply no longer there.”
Meanwhile, 21 people were evacuated from their nearby homes for safety reasons.
State prosecutor Peter Fritzen said the investigation into what caused the collapse will begin once the rescue effort has concluded.
Associated Press contributed to this report