A construction crew working in Hannover's old town unearthed a ten hundredweight (I believe that's 1000 lbs.) bomb yesterday. It was a World War II dud that had buried itself right in the middle of town. About 9,000 people were evacuated last night from apartments, restaurants, hotels, the train station and Hannover's red light district. The bomb squad built a barrier of 49 water-filled shipping containers to protect the city from a possible blast, and diffused the bomb safely. Other than the restaurant owners and the hookers who lost a night of business, everyone was ok.
This is not the only bomb around town. In January, 25,000 people in the Hannover suburbs had to leave their homes while several bombs were diffused. Last year, another bomb was discovered and safely detonated beside an apartment complex. In 2009, there was another one... and so on. In fact, WWII bombs are regularly discovered all over Germany. Roughly 10% of the bombs that were dropped never exploded on impact. The older and more corroded they become, the harder it is to remove the bombs without making them explode. With age, they can become so volatile that there's a risk the buried bombs could just blow up spontaneously.
Maybe I should be scared, but I am sort of fascinated by this part of history that is still being uncovered. After all, there's a much bigger risk that I could get hit by a car or die of a rare disease then in a bomb explosion. I am used to thinking that a threat to public safety is new and a result of poor gun control, violent culture, or some form of terrorism. Hannover's bomb threat, though, was planted seven decades ago, and by people from my own country. Maybe 'bomb scare' is too strong of a term for what happened in central Hannover yesterday. To the evacuees, maybe it was just a bad night for business.
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