Frankfurt evacuates 60,000 people to defuse WWII bomb
A relic of the relentless pummeling that flattened much of Germany more than 70 years ago forced tens of thousands of people to temporarily abandon their homes Sunday in Frankfurt.
Technicians worked for hours to defuse a 4,000pound, World War II-era bomb, thought to have been dropped by the British Royal Air Force, after it was discovered Tuesday at a construction site for faculty buildings on the edge of Goethe University.
More than 60,000 people living within about a mile of the bomb cleared out early Sunday from a well-to-do district that is home to some of Frankfurt’s banking elite, as well as Germany’s central bank, a day after two hospitals and several retirement homes were evacuated.
“For 7 a.m. on a Sunday, the streets were unusually active, but it wasn’t a rush,” said Anthony J. Garcia, a customer experience consultant in one of the city’s major financial services firms, who left his home early Sunday. “Folks were being attentive to the demands and what they had to do.”
Police combed the streets and used a helicopter with a heat-sensitive camera to ensure that the area was clear, but the presence of several holdouts meant that the process did not begin at noon, as officials had hoped. Authorities said residents would be able to return to their homes by 8 p.m.
The sheer number of people who were evacuated — it is believed to be the largest in postwar Germany — spoke to the high risk involved, but such events have become routine here, so authorities were prepared to deal with many people having nowhere to go.
The city’s Jahrhunderthalle convention center was opened, and, Garcia said, people arrived at a slow and steady pace. “There was no worry, no fright, no kind of rush,” he added.
The city’s main trade-fair complex opened early to accommodate the displaced, as did a number of museums, which offered free entry to city residents. By lunchtime, the German Architecture Museum had been visited by more than 250 people who were forced to leave, the director, Peter Cachola Schmal, said.
“It’s a different atmosphere here today, because people are settling for a longer time,” he said. “People are coming here to sit with their laptop and work, for example — or read the newspaper for hours.”
German authorities have calculated that around 15 percent of the bombs dropped during World War II failed to explode, and more than 2,000 tons of unexploded weaponry are found each year. In the rush to rebuild after the war, Germans often just buried the munitions, so many of them are turning up only now.
On Saturday, about 21,000 people were forced to leave their homes in the western city of Koblenz after the discovery of a 1,100-pound U.S. bomb earlier in the week. In July, the discovery of an unexploded wartime bomb among children’s toys led to the evacuation of a kindergarten in Darmstadt, just south of Frankfurt.
Experts say the bombs are just as dangerous as they were seven decades ago, even though the Germans are experienced at dealing with unexploded devices. Three explosives experts were killed in Göttingen in 2010 while preparing to defuse a much smaller bomb.
The bomb found in Frankfurt, formally called an HC 4000, was one of several types of large British munitions that became known as a “blockbuster,” owing to its sheer explosive force, which was often enough to destroy entire streets.
“My first thought was about whether my workplace would still exist on Monday,” said Vladimir Alexeev, media coordinator and social media manager at Goethe University’s student center, who works less than a quarter of a mile from the site where the bomb was found.