Christmas at Augsburg was ruined by an unpleasant event, where the authorities had to evacuate more than 54,000 people from Augsburg to diffuse a 1.8-ton bomb from World War II era. The bomb was uncovered during some construction work, and about 4,000 police and firefighters were rushed to the scene.
The evacuation was Germany’s largest since the second war. According to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, police did not reveal how long it would take to defuse the bomb.
The evacuation began at 8 a.m. and within a few minutes everyone within a 0.9-mile radius of the location of the bomb was evacuated, with several schools and sports halls used as shelters.
After the area was heavily bombed during the World War 2, unexploded bombs have regularly been found in many German cities. They do pose a threat to the people, and there have been many people killed by these type of bombs, such as the death of a construction worker in January 2012, when his digger hit a bomb in Euskirchen.
Such evacuations have also been taking place in the past, with 20,000 people in Cologne forced to leave their homes in May 2015 after a 1-ton bomb was discovered. And even in December 2011, 45,000 people were evacuated from the area of Koblenz after two unexploded bombs were spotted in the Rhine’s riverbed.
