EA 500-kilogram World War II bomb in Hanau has been successfully defused. The restricted area was released at 2:56 p.m., a spokesman said. It was said that it was a type of bomb that was easier to defuse, so the emergency services had spread cautious optimism that the defusing would be quick. Previously, 17,000 residents from parts of Hanau’s city center and the North-West district had to vacate their apartments in the restricted area. The evacuation was completed around 2 p.m.
The English explosive device was discovered on Thursday at a construction site in the residential area on Teichweg in the North West district. The city administration’s crisis team has defined a safety zone of around one kilometer that must be cleared to defuse the bomb, the city has announced.
This exclusion zone includes that part of the north-west residential area known in Hanau as Rosenau, as well as the western and northern parts of the inner city. The area should be cleared by 12 p.m. The defusing itself is scheduled for lunchtime.
During the evacuation hours, the city provides a contact point for those who have to leave their homes. The August-Schärttner-Halle on Martin-Luther-King-Straße, which has been open since the morning, was prepared for this. In the morning, there are free shuttle buses to the hall from the bus station at Freiheitsplatz. If you need help leaving your apartment, you can call the administration’s citizen hotline on 06181 / 67660-2000.
Nursing homes have already been cleared
The Saint Vincent Hospital is also in the security zone. This does not have to be cleared, as the crisis team decided. Instead, the patients are taken to safety inside the building, namely in rooms that are not in the direction of where the bomb was found. There are also four retirement homes in the restricted area, which were cleared on Saturday. The residents were taken to other homes or to emergency shelters in the Mittelbuchen multi-purpose hall, in the Wolfgang community center and in the former Underwood barracks. According to the administration, 700 helpers, full-time paramedics and volunteer supporters, were deployed.
Numerous bus routes are also affected by the closure in the city area. Because a railway line is in the security zone, local trains from Hanau via Maintal to Frankfurt no longer run from 12 p.m.
Just a week earlier, a bomb from the Second World War had also been discovered in Hanau, namely during construction work on the Heraeus company premises. The eastern part of the city center was cleared for this, and 16,000 Hanau residents had to leave their homes. It was not so easy to neutralize this bomb, so the evacuation dragged on.
It was not possible to defuse them, i.e. to remove the detonator. Therefore, the bomb had to be detonated in a controlled manner. For this purpose, a sand hill was piled up above it, which was weighted down with water containers. During construction work in Hanau, bombs from World War II are repeatedly found because the city was heavily attacked at the end of the war. In the night of March 19, 1945, the city center was destroyed.
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