Germany: 7,500 residents evacuated in Berlin due to WWII bomb discovery

Subscribe to our channel! rupt.ly/subscribe

Around 7,500 residents had to be evacuated in Berlin's Kreuzberg district on Saturday after construction workers found an unexploded WWII bomb of US-American origin on the compound of the European patent office on Wednesday afternoon.

About 350 police officers evacuated residents and shops within the immediate 300 metre wide banned area from 8.00 AM local time (7.00 AM GMT) and secured the area with street blockades and officers patrolling. Residents were allowed to return to their apartments after the successful defusing of the WWII bomb by a team of police pyrotechnics experts around 6.00 PM (5.00 PM GMT).

"When we arrived, the difficulty was that the bomb was still inside the ground for about three quarters in 2 meters of depth. So we literally had to dig to get close to the bomb. The defusing wasn't that easy, the [two] detonation devices had to be partly dismantled and removed in individual parts,'' said Berlin police pyrotechnics chief Dietmar Puepke.

Paramedics from several different medical organisations such as the German Red Cross and the Berlin fire department supported the evacuation of people with physical difficulties or people under quarantine or with coronavirus infections.

The authorities organised several locations where residents could spend the day. Quarantined people or coronavirus patients were brought to one of three hotels, that are closed during the lockdown, to ensure the following of the infection measures during the pandemic.

*SOUNDBITES*

SOT Michael Gassen, Berlin police spokesperson, (German): "Since eight o'clock this morning we have been on the scene, my colleagues checked every house one after another. About 7,500 people are affected and their apartments have to be evacuated.''

SOT Michael Gassen, Berlin police spokesperson, (German): "It is a 250 kilogram WWII bomb, which was found yesterday during construction works.''

SOT, Dietmar Puepke, Police pyrotechnics chief, (German): "When we arrived, the problem was that the bomb was still inside the ground for about three quarters in two metres of depth. So we literally had to dig to get close to the bomb.''

SOT, Dietmar Puepke, Police pyrotechnics chief, (German): "The defusing wasn't that easy, the [two] detonation devices had to be partly dismantled and removed in individual parts.''

SOT, Dietmar Puepke, Police pyrotechnics chief, (German): "​This is metal that was laying in the ground for 75 years. It wasn't just put there, it was dropped from an airplane, it hit the ground at several hundreds of kilometers per hour and entered the ground. So the metal deformed. Due to the bad conditions of the bedding, rust developed on the bomb on the detonation devices.''

SOT Dietmar Puepke, Police pyrotechnics chief, (German): "There are projections saying that there are still 4,000 unexploded bombs in the ground in Berlin waiting to be defused.''

Video ID: 20201114-045

Video on Demand: https://ruptly.tv/videos/20201114-045
Contact: cd@ruptly.tv

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Ruptly
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Ruptly