Police dogs, drones search in vain for missing people in Rotterdam apartment building

Three people are still missing after an explosion and massive fire in an apartment building on Schammenkamp in Rotterdam-Zuid on Monday. The police and fire department searched the building with dogs and drones but found no sign of them. The building is currently too unstable for the authorities to send people in to search.

The sniffer dogs signaled that they found something several times while searching the building on Tuesday. But that does not necessarily mean they found a body, a police spokesperson told Rijnmond. That the three missing people did not survive the explosion must be taken into account, a fire brigade spokesperson added.

One of the missing people is 43-year-old Kamran Khan, a father of three young children, his brother Razwan (41) told Rijnmond. Kamran’s business was in the building where the explosion happened. He was supposed to meet with a woman in Alkmaar but was too tired for the drive, so he video-called her from the office instead.

After a sleepless night, Razwan got hold of the woman on Tuesday morning. “She said that the conversation started at 8:00 p.m. According to her, the connection was lost just before 8:30 p.m. She only heard static and couldn’t see anything. Then she tried to call him back, but the phone didn’t ring,” Razwan told the regional broadcaster.

“The explosion happened around 8:30 p.m., so there is a good chance he was sitting inside and witnessed everything,” a shaken Razwan said. “Friends of mine who live there said they didn’t see him come out. They didn’t know he was inside, or they would have opened the door and pulled him out.” When Razwan arrived at the scene around 8:45 p.m., there was nothing he could do. “The barrier tapes had already been placed. I said several times that I was there for my brother, but we were not allowed to go anywhere.”

Kamran has a wife and three young children, Razwan said. “The oldest is 12 years old,” he said. “We haven’t told the children yet what happened. The eldest just thinks: father is away for a while, but he will be back. So that conversation still has to happen.”

Kamran was a “spontaneous joker,” Razwan said. “Always smiling, sociable. A fan of football. He has been active as a trainer at his son’s football club. And on Wednesdays, he played football with us. The other days, he’s at home with the family. He’s just a very sweet, quiet guy.”

Hamza’s uncle is another of the missing people. “Since Monday evening, I’ve only heard that his number is out of service,” the 21-year-old Rotterdam resident told AD. “Probably because the phone was burned.” A colleague of Hamza’s uncle is believed to be the third missing person. They had just returned from a job half an hour before the explosion.

Hamza was shocked when he saw the disaster site for the first time. What little hope he had disappeared. “So much damage. You can’t survive this,” he told the newspaper. He described his uncle as a hardworking man, working from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily. “We really hope their bodies are found so that they can be buried. You can’t imagine that their remains will remain missing and will be removed with the rubble.”

Loved ones of the three missing people visited the apartment building overnight, a police officer told Rijnmond. “Their families still have so many questions about the whereabouts of their loved one. That is painful to hear,” the officer said. Three cops guarded the cordoned-off street in Zuidwijk to prevent anyone from trying to enter the unstable building.

Of the 44 homes evacuated after the explosion on Monday evening, 12 to 15 are damaged so badly that they are uninhabitable. These are the homes above the garage where the explosion happened. The residents of the other evacuated homes could return after the homes were checked and repaired.

The police have not said anything about a possible cause of the explosion - forensic investigators have not yet been able to enter the building. The emergency services did say that the blast had “enormous force” and wasn’t like the many explosives that had been set off throughout the Netherlands over the past year.