FRANCE: Workers heard new cracks at a Paris airport terminal yesterday a day after part of the roof collapsed, and the airport's head said he would tear it down if an investigation proved the structure was unsafe.
Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle airport has been closed to passengers since Sunday's accident killed four people, but workers are clearing the rubble and trying to ensure the building is safe.
"Police evacuated the building as a precaution after the cracking was heard in the same terminal," said Mr Jerome Dutrieux, spokesman for Aeroports de Paris (ADP), the Paris airports operator. "The cracks were again in the departure hall."
Concrete, metal and glass crashed down onto a waiting area in terminal 2E on Sunday morning, bringing down a large section of the long tube-like building at Paris's biggest airport, minutes after passengers saw and heard cracks in the roof.
Permanent closure of the showcase building would be a big blow to the airport authority's finances and image as it prepares for privatisation, but ADP chairman Mr Pierre Graff said safety was the top priority.
"If all the \ rings which make up this terminal are beyond repair, we will raze everything to the ground," he told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview. "We will take no risk in terms of safety."
Firemen said they had retrieved four bodies from the rubble, revising the death toll down from five. The search could last days and it is not clear whether there are more bodies under the rubble, a fire brigade spokesman said.
The futuristic terminal, used mainly by national carrier Air France, opened only 11 months ago.
Its 60 daily flights are being diverted to other terminals at the airport in Roissy, on the northeastern outskirts of Paris.
"The problem is not the flights, it's the number of passengers," Mr Dutrieux said. "Some 20,000 to 25,000 people pass through it each day."
France has launched a criminal investigation and the architect, Mr Paul Andreu, headed back to France from China where he is working on an opera house.
"I can't explain what happened. I just don't understand it," Mr Andreu told L'Humanité newspaper.