42-jährige Frau verschwindet in Kläranlage - Bonn, NRW, Germany - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

By Florian Ludwig 18. 03. 2003
Bonn. A 42-year-old employee of the city of Bonn probably died in an accident at the Salierweg sewage treatment plant on Tuesday. During a routine inspection, she is said to have fallen into a shaft several meters deep and filled with sewage sludge, as a colleague who accompanied her reported.

Or she fell into an adjoining pipe about 30 centimeters thick. The woman was not found until Tuesday evening. The fire brigade and special divers from Duisburg searched in vain until the evening hours. The search is to continue on Wednesday.

Tuesday noon: Under the most beautiful sunshine and also for work in a sewage treatment plant, the 42-year-old, accompanied by an employee, climbs the conical and grassy digestion tower.

From up there, she wants to perform a simple visual inspection. "The digester was serviced on Monday and such an inspection one day later is a normal procedure," explains urban planning officer Sigurd Trommer, who also rushed to the site.

Around 1. 20 p. m. the clarifier makes a terrible observation. "He heard a scream and just saw his colleague's legs disappear in the shaft," Trommer quotes the worker. As the employee looks into the shaft filled with mud, he sees nothing more.

Immediately a large-scale search action starts. Fire brigade, rescue forces, divers of the Red Cross and specially trained fire brigade divers from Cologne will be pulled together on site right next to the North Bridge. The police and the State Office for Occupational Safety and Health are also on site. "As far as we could, we immediately searched and cleaned the shafts," says operations manager Günter Schatzl.


The long pipe is also searched from top to bottom by the fire brigade. A company from Beuel leads probes into the 30-centimetre wide tube. Nothing. The 42-year-old engineer remains missing. "Employees of the sewage treatment plant have always told us that they could not imagine anyone fitting into such a small pipe," said Schatzl at a press conference in the late afternoon. Nevertheless, they also searched there.

At this time the divers from Bonn and Cologne have moved away again. Instead, special divers from a company in Duisburg carry out the operation. A diver swims through the entire egg-shaped digester. Again without result. According to GA information, the manager of the sewage treatment plant, Holm Brückner, sends an employee to the missing woman's apartment to make sure that she is not there.

Although the story has become a mystery, the testimony of the witness is believed to be credible. According to the plant management, the downpipe into which it could have fallen leads into a branched, hundreds of meters long pipe system, which, however, has no connection to the Rhine, as was confirmed on Tuesday.

With darkness, the soldiers have temporarily stopped their search. According to city spokesman Friedel Frechen, the digestion tower will be pumped completely empty on Wednesday. "This takes a total of two days. And we don't know what to do with the mud yet. " 10,000 cubic metres are to be moved.

Type of publication: Newspaper When was the article reported?: 03/18/2003 Publication: General-Anzeiger-Bonn Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: regional News Category: Society/People

Visit Instructions:
Give the date of your visit at the news location along with a description of what you learned or experienced.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   02/25/2017 Narayan, visited it