On 29 January at around 8 a.m. there was a serious gas explosion in Langenzersdorf, Austria. As I live in Korneuburg, the neigh­bouring village of Langenzersdorf, I im­medi­ate­ly set off to the disaster site with my dog Egmont after receiving the as­sign­ment.

The situation presented itself as follows: A gas explosion had severely damaged a resi­den­tial complex with about 40 apart­ments on the south-east corner. Of these, four flats on two floors had completely col­lapsed, and the adjacent roof struc­ture, which was still intact, was in full fire. Small fires were also blazing in the area of the collapse site.

In parallel to the fire-fighting efforts, the operations command decided to carry out initial locating attempts with biological and technical means. For this purpose, two search and rescue dog teams were de­ployed into the par­tial­ly collapsed flats using turntable ladders and aerial rescue platforms. At this point, Feuerwehr Wien Ret­tungs­hun­de was already on site with seven dog handlers and ten search and res­cue dogs. As this attempt was not suc­cess­ful, another approach was made by search and rescue dogs via the stair­case. However, this proved to be im­pos­sible, as the stair­case from the first floor onwards was filled with so much smoke that it would only have been possible to pro­ceed using self-con­tained breathing devices and therefore search and rescue dogs could not proceed either.

We then moved with our dogs to a stand-by area near the scene of the accident to ob­serve the further development of the situa­tion. At about 12.00 o'clock we re­ceived the information that all residents of the house could be con­tacted by the police - except for one person. This per­son's flat was on the completely de­stroyed third floor. There­fore, the emer­gen­cy services had to assume with a prob­abil­ity bor­der­ing on certainty that sur­viv­al was not possible under the cir­cum­stances that prevailed immedi­ately after the col­lapse. For this reason and due to the massive danger of collapse, the mis­sion for the search and rescue dogs was terminated by the command.

After another six hours, the lifeless body of the missing man was found under the rub­ble, after the debris had been re­moved by a specialist company together with the fire bri­gade and the Austrian Armed Forces. Un­for­tu­nate for the man, the ac­ci­dent ended fatally.