
Mass Evacuation Underway in German City over WWII Bombs - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-12/germany-mass-evacuation-underway-before-wwii-bomb-defusing
======
davidw
This is a fairly regular occurrence in parts of Europe.

Once, I was supposed to take a train from Munich back home to Padova. It's a
fairly long train ride, but quite pleasant, as it's very scenic, and of course
on trains you're free to move around, buy food, read, use electronics, and so
on. It turned into an epic odyssey because they rerouted the thing through...
Villach and Tarvisio in for northeastern Italy, due to a bomb near the tracks
somewhere in northern Italy. That was a bit too far.

~~~
hinkley
Years ago, maybe twenty or more, I heard that due to faulty triggers, almost
half of the ordinance dropped on France in WWII is unaccounted for, as in
“could still be a couple feet underground in your yard/field”. Farmers were
still discovering them relatively often.

I wonder if that fraction has moved much. Wikipedia in the subject of the
Ardennes, Verdun, and Unexploded Ordinance (UXOs):

> In the Ardennes region of France, large-scale citizen evacuations were
> necessary during MEC removal operations in 2001. In the forests of Verdun
> French government "démineurs" working for the Département du Déminage still
> hunt for poisonous, volatile, and/or explosive munitions and recover about
> 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells
> containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas. French and Flemish
> farmers still find many UXOs when ploughing their fields, the so-called
> "iron harvest".

I know these are often big bombs but 900 tonnes a year‽

~~~
gsnedders
> I know these are often big bombs but 900 tonnes a year‽

Remember the Allies alone dropped _millions_ of tons of bombs, yet alone the
tens (hundreds?) of millions of tons of shells fired across battlefields, and
we've not even started counting grenades and other similar smaller ordinance.

900 tons is _nothing_ compared with the sheer amount fired in the European
theatre, especially across both World Wars.

Also remember many of the prolonged battles were essentially fields of potted
mud: along with period fuses, many of the shells simply landed in soft mud to
slowly sink in.

I think it's definitely the case that many of those less involved in the
European theatre (v. the near universal conscription of men in Europe) don't
realise how intensive much of the fighting here was. These are wars that went
on for years, often with the front lines scarcely moving for months, with
continuous bombardment for the entire time.

~~~
sk5t
Almost one thousand tons _per year_ still seems like a pretty large number
considering the war ended some 75 years ago. How long is the long tail of
demining?

~~~
brnt
That war is now over a century ago. Belgium still has an impressive
infrastructure and skilled personnel to deal with this.

Now you understand why mines are outlawed almost everywhere. Cleanup will
never be done. Its just started in Bosnia for instance, with decades of work
ahead of us.

~~~
gsnedders
This. If we assume we're talking about the order of 10,000,000 tons, of which
10% didn't detonate (this is roughly accurate for bombs & shells, mines are
much harder to quantify), then that left 1,000,000 tons of UXO.

If we assume (somehow!) half of that was dealt with quickly, that leaves
500,000 tons of UXO. If we assume 1000 tons are found per year, that's still
500 years to tidy up.

Across both wars the total may well be closer to 100M than 10M, so then that
makes it 5000 years.

------
Tepix
I came across some interesting tech for disarming these old bombs:
Raketenklemme
[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raketenklemme](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raketenklemme)

It's a tool that will super quickly unscrew the detonator before it can fail
and lead to detonation.

~~~
Luc
'Rocket wrench' in English. That is a cool tool!
[https://www.scopex.fr/en/products/eod-rocket-wrench-
csl-50-c...](https://www.scopex.fr/en/products/eod-rocket-wrench-csl-50-cal-
rw/)

------
catsareok
This happens often. When I was there in 2011 or so, there was a massive one
found on the Rhine because the water was low. It was something like 2 or 3
thousand pounds. It's amazing how much of this stuff will be sitting around
for hundreds or thousands of years even.

~~~
orbital-decay
How long can a bomb remain potentially dangerous though?

~~~
segfaultbuserr
The explosive doesn't rot, but the trigger mechanism does. When the trigger is
good, at least its behavior is predictable and a technican knows the precise
condition that the bomb will detonate, but in the worst case, of which the
trigger is completed damaged, it's unpredictable - they don't spontaneously
detonate, until the slightest disturbance.

~~~
fhars
„Good“ triggers were deliberately engineered to be unpredictable to make
defusing harder and so you cannot assume the the area is safe just because the
bombing has stopped.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
The most notorious example is a time-delayed chemical fuse, it uses a slow
chemical reaction to detonate the bomb a few days later, as a form of
psychological warfare. If the bomb didn't explode as designed, it means the
chemical somehow got stuck, extremely dangerous to defuse, no matter how much
prior knowledge one has.

------
dmoy
Reminder that unexploded ordinance kills over 10,000 people every year
(worldwide, not in Germany)

~~~
cyberferret
From memory, most of these casualties are from landmines that are still
planted in South-East Asian countries during the Korean and Vietnam conflict?
I am thinking that Afghanistan etc. may also figure quite high in the
statistics.

Sadly, the primary victims seem to be children, who come across these
'interesting' metal objects in the ground, or inadvertently tread on them
while playing or working the fields.

More needs to be done by the forces who planted them to clear designated
minefields after the conflict has ended.

~~~
freddie_mercury
Not that it makes it any better, but the primary victims aren't children, it
is usually the main provider. Who is plowing a field or looking for food in
the forest.

------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
For those who are not aware of the issue, the Smithsonian Magazine has a
comprehensive introduction of this issue, I recommend to read it.

* There Are Still Thousands of Tons of Unexploded Bombs in Germany, Left Over From World War II

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/seventy-years-
world-w...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/seventy-years-world-war-
two-thousands-tons-unexploded-bombs-germany-180957680/)

------
bacon_waffle
> 250-kilogram (330-pound) American and British bombs

Probably a typo, but is this a special case in imperial measurement where
bomb-pounds are heavier than regular pounds?

~~~
easytiger
I'm not sure about this but bomb weightings in pounds are often nominal.
Analogous to weapon caliber I guess.

[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/06/how-heavy-
is-a-5...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/06/how-heavy-
is-a-500-pound-bomb.html)

------
anonu
I highly recommend the recent documentary on Netflix "greatest events of ww2
in color"...

It's hard to think that something so horrible as ww2 happened in fairly recent
history. These unexploded bombs serve as a good reminder of that.

~~~
cheschire
It’s easy to act civilized when you don’t feel directly threatened.

------
CrazyStat
A friend who works at Amazon told me finding unexploded bombs has become
almost expected when they're building new fulfillment centers in Germany.

~~~
cheschire
Three things you’re almost guaranteed to find at a German construction site
are UXO, Roman ruins, or the migratory path of some rare animal.

------
klingonopera
An issue with these occurrences are the resulting costs, which sometimes can
catch land-owners off guard, when a bomb is found on their property.

[translated]:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.t-online.de%2Fheim-
garten%2Fbauen%2Fid_81059224%2Fwer-zahlt-die-bombenentschaerfung-im-eigenen-
garten-.html)

[original]: [https://www.t-online.de/heim-garten/bauen/id_81059224/wer-
za...](https://www.t-online.de/heim-garten/bauen/id_81059224/wer-zahlt-die-
bombenentschaerfung-im-eigenen-garten-.html)

~~~
Aloha
why on earth is this not covered by some sort of fund?

------
derda
Happens once or twice in my city every year. Last year I missed the evacuation
perimeter by about 50m. Quite a weird feeling taking your trash out and
hearing policecars driving though the neighbourhood making PA-announcements to
evacuate.

------
jessriedel
How often are people killed in Germany by old ordnance?

~~~
detaro
I think now there's an incident with deaths every few years, e.g. last I could
quickly find were 2014 (excavator hit one on a construction site, driver
killed) and 2010 (3 bomb disposal workers killed while prepping a bomb to be
disarmed).

~~~
b2ccb2
I was in a somewhat close vicinity for the 2010 one, about 3km away. It
occurred in Göttingen[1], I was studying for an exam and at around 10pm I
heard a rather loud dull/muffled bang and my windows vibrated. 3 people from
the Kampfmittelräumdienst[2] died while trying to disarm a 500kg bomb with a
chemical trigger, 2 were heavily injured and 4 slightly.

[1] [https://www.goettinger-
tageblatt.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Goe...](https://www.goettinger-
tageblatt.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Goettingen-Drei-Menschen-sterben-bei-
Bombenexplosion)

[2] [https://www.goettinger-
tageblatt.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Goe...](https://www.goettinger-
tageblatt.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Goettingen-Drei-Menschen-sterben-bei-
Bombenexplosion)

Update: Around 7000 people were evacuated before the disarming took place.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
We have a special institution for dealing with that:

[1]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfmittelr%C3%A4umdienst](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfmittelr%C3%A4umdienst)

------
mlang23
This is clickbait and not worth your time.

The last paragraph in the article is the most important:

Almost 75 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs are frequently
found in Germany. Disposing of them sometimes entails large-scale evacuations
as a precaution.

OK, evacuating 14k people is a _bit_ unusuable, but we find and defuse WWII
bombs roughly whenever we have a relatively big construction site. Besides,
this doesn't only happen in Germany as bloomberg writes. Europe is a little
bigger then just Germany...

------
detaro
Estimations I've read are that around one tenth of bombs dropped in WW2 didn't
explode (which leaves open how many were cleared quickly though)

------
EdSchouten
I hope the bomb squad in Dortmund is smarter than the one in Munich...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabinger_7#Underground_bomb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabinger_7#Underground_bomb_found)

~~~
zaarn
Idunno, they're fairly competent. Not all WW1 or WW2 bombs can be disarmed,
sometimes the trigger is too sensitive or can't be safely disarmed. Sometimes
the best call is to detonate the bomb when you know it's going to blow rather
then when you don't.

We had a rather large bomb (3.8t) the previous year in my city, a large radius
(1.5km) was evacuated and the disposal team went in (opting to forgoe the
protective gear as the bomb was too large anyway) and successfully disarmed
it. It's simply pure luck.

