17,500 Hannover residents home after 2 WWII bombs defused
Around 17,500 people in Hannover's Misburg district were able to return home on Sunday evening after bomb disposal experts defused two unexploded Second World War bombs. Everyone living within a one kilometre radius of the two sites had to leave their homes from 9am. The Hannover fire service lifted the safety zone at 17:48.
Both devices were American aerial bombs. The first, a 250 kilogram bomb at the Steinbruchsfeld building site, was defused at 16:25. The second, in Kafkastrasse, had also been expected to weigh 250 kilograms but turned out to be a 500 kilogram bomb, and it was defused on site. Work was briefly interrupted in the afternoon after people were discovered inside the cordoned area and the zone had to be checked again.
The sites were identified during survey work for the planned Steinbruchsfeld-Ost housing quarter. The second suspected bomb was only found after the city ordered an extended analysis of historical aerial photographs, so that both could be cleared in a single evacuation. Around 700 firefighters, police officers, aid workers and bomb disposal staff took part, many of them volunteers. Free buses took residents to a care point at the IGS Roderbruch school, where several hundred people were looked after, and 83 people with limited mobility needed patient transport.
Unexploded bombs from the war are still found regularly in German cities, especially during construction work. If you are told to evacuate, leave promptly and follow the instructions of the emergency services, because any delay extends the operation for everyone. Cities usually announce evacuations in advance on their websites and warning apps such as NINA, so it is worth keeping alerts switched on for the area where you live.