Five people are missing after a fire tore through a building housing a restaurant and apartments in Thusis, in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubunden, in the early hours of Friday. Graubunden cantonal police received the report shortly after midnight, and eight people were injured: two seriously, two with moderate injuries and four with minor ones.
Fourteen people escaped the building. No deaths had been confirmed as of Friday morning, and police have not said whether the five unaccounted for are believed to have been inside when the fire took hold.
A difficult building to fight
Preliminary findings indicate the fire started on the building's second floor. The structure combined ground-floor commercial premises with residences above, an arrangement common in Swiss town centers and one that puts sleeping occupants directly over the part of the building most likely to be alight at night.
Conditions inside deteriorated quickly. The stairwell collapsed, and crews had to bring in a crane to open the roof in order to reach parts of the building. Losing a stairwell removes both the occupants' escape route and the firefighters' way in, and forces a slower approach from above at exactly the point when speed matters most.
The response
Close to 100 emergency personnel were deployed, drawn from the fire services of Thusis, Cazis, Oberer Heinzenberg, Ems Chemie and Albula. Mutual aid on that scale is standard practice in Graubunden, a large and mountainous canton where individual town brigades are small and distances between them are significant.
Rescue services from Mittelbunden, Chur, Schiers and Surselva also attended, alongside a Rega air rescue crew, and the injured were taken to hospitals in Chur, Thusis, Ilanz and Zurich. The municipality arranged shelter and meals for people displaced by the fire, and a cantonal care team was sent to support those affected.
The cause is not known
Cantonal police said they are working with the public prosecutor's office to determine the cause. No finding has been made and none should be inferred from the fact that the fire began on an upper floor.
Police indicated that the work at the site is continuing and that several days may pass before further information is available. Searching a building whose stairwell has already given way is slow and dangerous, and the number of people confirmed missing may change in either direction as that work proceeds.
