Around 13,600 inhabitants of Wilhelmshaven, in northern Germany, will have to leave their homes this Tuesday after an American bomb from World War II that has not yet exploded was located.
The device, weighing 250 kilograms and equipped with two fuzes --safety and detonation elements placed in bombs to activate and explode their explosive charge--, was discovered during some work at the city's naval arsenal. According to the Police, its neutralization requires establishing a security perimeter of one kilometer around.
The evacuation operation will begin at 8:00 a.m. (local time) and will reach the Südstadt neighborhood, the center of the port city and the Heppens area. All these areas must be completely evacuated before 11:00 a.m.
As a protective measure, three sports pavilions will be set up to accommodate those affected as temporary shelters, and the bus service will be interrupted from the start of the evacuation.
At the same time, the municipality's crisis management team, in coordination with emergency services and the public transport company, will maintain contact with nursing homes and care centers in the area to determine if it is also necessary to evacuate these resources.
Situations of this type continue to be recorded in Germany despite the fact that more than 80 years have passed since the end of the conflict. The appearance of unexploded bombs is common during construction and excavation work, which necessitates organizing extensive evacuation operations like the current one.
One of the most recent episodes occurred in mid-July in the city of Potsdam, southwest of Berlin, where the discovery of a similar device forced the evacuation of about 6,500 people.