What we kinda know today is that there was a north-south subway being built in Koln….intersecting in the middle at the city train station. It was a multi-year project and they’d already built the subway along this area of the street where the building collapsed. Next year, the line would have been completed and started running.
The mayor is quickly standing out and making comments over the construction and the other buildings showing some slide or structural issues. The construction involved? They are really quiet over this issue, and the insurance company associated with them is likely weeping in the shadows right now. The amount of potential damage would be into the hundreds of millions if engineers say that buildings along the subway are subject to collapse.
I’m guessing that the entire construction project will be halted for at least a year, with the company sinking quickly into bankruptcy. No company will dare pick up the slack or involve itself in the future building of the subway. So you can forget about the north-south rail line.
The curious thing about this deal is that this was the city archives building….with literally tons of data stored there. The firemen are talking about a massive covering going up today over the structure and then digging the place out….one shovel at a time….to recover most of the records. This could take months to clean the site. Rebuilding on the site? I’d have a lot of doubt over this. The city will find open areas elsewhere and toss $10 million toward the building of a new facility.
Finally….whatever happened in Koln is likely to get around to other cities in Germany as they all check out their own subway lines and the damage to other structures. This could take a decade to check and fix every single problem. We could be talking about billions to fix all these structures.
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