Aerial photos show a debris field where an apartment building previously stood.

An explosion caused complete devastation in Hemer, Sauerland, on Friday evening.

Two people were injured and rescued, three were initially trapped and buried under the rubble, but alive, as a police spokeswoman said on Saturday night.

Three other residents of the house were probably not at home at the time of the explosion.

The rescue operation begins - a race against time.

With heavy equipment in the form of excavators and cranes, the rubble has to be carefully cleared away piece by piece in order to get to the buried people.

The rescue workers don't know exactly what to expect late Friday evening.

You are preparing for a long night.

There is one seriously injured, but this is not in mortal danger.

He was high up on the rubble mountain, reports fire brigade spokesman Andreas Schulte.

The house is said to have been a six-party house with eight residents.

"Unfortunately, it collapsed completely, there is not a single stone standing on top of another," says firefighter Andreas Schulte.

The task now is to advance cautiously, but also quickly, to the buried people.

"We are in contact with the people, we talk to them and try to save them from the rubble," Schulte told the news portal "Lokalstimme.de".

Then, during the night, a doctor manages to get to one of the buried people.

"He was able to provide her with medical care, but she has not yet been recovered," says the police spokeswoman.

The detonation shattered the windows of neighboring houses.

A structural engineer must now clarify how much the houses have gotten.

That's how long they will remain evacuated, says the police spokeswoman.

The exact cause of the explosion is initially unclear, but the fire brigade and police report that it was a gas explosion.

The area around the scene of the accident is cordoned off.

It is unclear how many people were in the house at the time of the accident.

Hemer is a town with 34,000 inhabitants in the Märkisches Kreis in Sauerland.

It is the eastern neighboring town of Iserlohn.