Police get tough to ensure bomb evacuation
Frankfurt city officials have warned that Germany’s financial capital could grind to a halt tomorrow if residents don’t heed orders to vacate their homes to allow the defusing of a massive World War II bomb.
Today, the city will evacuate some 60,000 people in the nation’s biggest such manoeuvre since the war while officials disarm the British bomb, discovered on a building site this week in Frankfurt’s leafy Westend, where many wealthy bankers live.
Fire and police chiefs, at a hastily called press conference yesterday, said they would use force and incarceration if necessary to clear the area of residents.
An uncontrolled explosion of the bomb would be big enough to flatten a city block, Frankfurt fire chief Reinhard Ries said.
‘‘This bomb has more than 1.4 tonnes of explosives. It’s not just fragments that are the problem, but also the pressure that it creates, that would dismantle all the buildings in a 100-metre radius.’’
The HC 4000 bomb is assumed to have been dropped by Britain’s Royal Air Force during the 1939-45 war. Such finds are not unusual, but rarely are the unexploded bombs so large and in such a sensitive position.
The compulsory evacuation radius of 1.5 kilometres around the bomb includes police headquarters, two hospitals, transport systems, and Germany’s central bank, which stores US$70 billion (NZ$98b) in gold reserves.
Officials yesterday called on Frankfurt’s residents to clear the area by 8am Sunday local time, and warned that the effort take at least 12 hours.
Police said they could not begin defusing the bomb until they were sure everyone had left the area. They would ring every doorbell and use heat-sensing technology from overhead helicopters to help them identify stragglers.
Roads and transport systems, including part of the city’s subway network, will be closed during the work and for at least two hours after the bomb is defused, to allow patients to be transported back to hospitals without the nuisance of heavy traffic. could
Air traffic from Frankfurt airport could also be affected if there was an easterly wind today, air traffic controllers said. Small private planes, helicopters and drones will be banned from the evacuation zone.
Frankfurters can spend the day at shelters set up at a trade fair and the Jahrhunderthalle convention centre, police have said.
In addition, most museums are offering Frankfurt residents free entry for the day, and a few of them will open their doors earlier in the morning than usual, the city said on its website.