On my way home today, next to the house I live in was the police, preventing cars to move on further on the road. Why? Another bomb. They find a bomb every couple of months in this city, and in whole Germany one much more often. They are remains from WW2, then have to be disarmed, transported away or be detonated in a hopefully controlled way.
The bomb they found today weights about 250kg, so it's not that huge, but huge enough to pose a threat to people and property.
The one they found today will be a quite difficult case. The bombs are often so rusted shut that they can't be disarmed. And this one can't be put under a controlled detonation either. So... A friend of mine lives only a few hundred metres away from that place.
It's weird to think that I passed the property under which the bomb was unearthed already half a hundred times or so. It could have detonated any moment then and killed me.
Here is a video that shows how the city I live in would look like if it wouldn't have been bombed to dust during WW2.
Die vom Krieg verschont gebliebene Stadt Köln - YouTube
Edit: there is a liveticker on the internet about the progress with the bomb. I wonder if they'll detonate it, then I'll probably hear it (but I guess that the windows of my flat will stay whole, sometimes the bombs are huge or the detonation doesn't work as expected, and then a lot of damage is done).
There are constantly sirens to be heard, with which the police tries to make sure that nobody gets into the danger zone.
Every couple of months they find a bomb in this city, even though the war is already over for like 70 years. It makes you wonder how many more bombs are sleeping in the soil under the city.
Sometimes people also die at construction sites, when a bomb is not noticed immediately but just detonates.
Edit: the detonation will take place sometime later it seems. The detonator is damaged and thus near unpredictable, and there is a huge building nearby that has to be evacuted.
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