Be Careful when Digging

Being careful when digging has a whole new meaning for construction projects here. Sure there are the underground wire and gas lines that require marking before you start digging (although a TV ad campaign reminding people on an almost daily basis to make the call doesn't seem to be needed. here). But there are other unexpected things that can be found that could really screw up the plans for a construction project.

250 lb bomb in Koblenz

One of those things is a bomb. Four times in about a 5 week period from late July to end of August, unexploded bombs dropped during WWII airstrikes have been found at sites in and around Koblenz.

The first of these was found on July 20, a Wednesday, while building an apartment house just south of the town center. This was a 250 pound British bomb. The location of this bomb was a bit inconvenient for a city that was trying to get to its 2,000,000th visitor to BUGA (the German National Garden Show). As it was  along the route of the BUGA shuttle, doing something about the bomb meant affecting visitors access to the show. Initially the city wanted to cover the bomb with steel palate and sand bags, then wait until a move convent time. But after a couple of days, plans for an evacuation of 3500 residents and 500 hotel guests were announced for Monday, July 25  was called for the area around the bomb and the bomb was removed.

The second was on August 10 occurred in Vallendar, the village just across the Rhine river from us when an American bomb was found. Then on August 23, at a construction site near the IKEA that is about 2 km from our appartment, a 500 lb British bomb was found. This one seem a bit more dangerous for a couple of reasons:

• one because it was in the middle of one of Koblenz' biggest shopping areas and next to the the major road entering the town from the north,
• and two because the fuse was a chemical fuse, which from the reports seemed harder to deal with. 

A one kilometer evacuation was started immediately and the bomb removed that evening. Since we live 2 km away and outside of the evacuation zone, we had no hint of what was happening and only learned about the bomb the next day.

1 Ton bomb in Osterspai

The forth bomb was found August 29th in Osterspai, just south of Koblenz. This was a one ton American bomb that was found in a field of fruit trees. There had been rumors of an unexploded  bomb in this field for years, but tests had never found anything before. That was until the 29th. The next day a 1 km evacuation that halted train and Rhine ship transports was called for and the bomb removed.