Death on Hamburg's luxury waterfront

Hafencity in Hamburg. Photo by Elias on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

On a single day last autumn, five Albanian labourers fell to their deaths while working on a prestige project in an exclusive district of Hamburg.

You could say that it was an accident waiting to happen.

Early in the morning on October 30th, the men were unloading bricks from a scaffolding that had been built up the inside of a lift shaft in the Überseequartier in Hamburg’s Hafencity.

The vast waterfront complex’s grand opening was fast approaching. 

The men were part of a team of over 1,000 builders who were racing against the clock to finish work on luxury apartments, three hotels, a shopping mall, and a cruise ship terminal.

A crane had loaded bricks onto the scaffolding for the men to pass into the building. But the structure hadn't been built to hold the weight. In an instance, it collapsed and dragged everyone who was standing on it down into the lift shaft.

A firefighter who arrived at the scene would later describe the twis…