Germany, evacuated in 20 thousand per bomb of the Second World War

BERLIN – The modern Germany train of Europe returns to look back to a past to be exorcised: The Second World War. It does not happen with a documentary operation on memory but for far more stringent contingencies: the discovery of a very large-scale bomb, whose disengagement is causing a huge evacuation work.

It happens in the rich and industrial western Ruhr region, precisely in the city of Dortmund, where 20 thousand people are being removed from their homes. They will be able to return there only when the authorities have declared the end of danger. The danger, in this case, is a bomb weighing 1800 kilograms launched by Allied forces during the bombing of Germany during the Second World War and remained there, unexploded, until it was identified.

Not by chance, during the excavation of a pipeline or maintenance work. Experts whose task is exactly to detect the presence of dangerous remnants of war, identified the bomb while watching aerial photos. Almost ordinary practice in Germany, where bombs dating back to World War II resurface with some regularity, but rarely of that devastating potential. A bomb similar to the one that upset the quiet Sunday of Dortmund was discovered two years ago and involved the evacuation of 45 thousand people in Koblenz, along the Rhine river.

The Dortmund authorities declared that the operation of removal and defusing the bomb should be completed early this afternoon.

03 novembre 2013