At some point, I plan to write a longer and better article on this topic, but because it belongs to current events, I'd like to touch on it now, already.
At 6:30 this evening, a 550lb WWII-bomb found during construction on the Spree River in Berlin was disarmed. It is the second one this month, and the fourth one in Berlin since I moved here six months ago. Five thousand people were evacuated to safety before the disarming.
The existence of dangerous remnants of World War II is something I believe not enough people know about. Every year, around 5,500 aerial bomb duds are disarmed in Germany. In Berlin alone, it's estimated that there are still 3,000 duds buried throughout the busy metropolis that need to be rendered innocuous. Some of these duds are found by special teams looking for them--anyone preparing to build can ask the government to search the construction site for bombs ahead of time. The rest are found during construction itself--sometimes even after the site has been thoroughly searched.
The biggest problem with these bombs is that they are becoming more dangerous with time. The fuses--exposed to the elements for over 65 years--deteriorate over time. Right now, if a bomb detonates, it's likely because someone hit it with a backhoe by accident, or otherwise touched it in some way. In the future, these bombs are going to become unpredictable, ticking time-bombs. The fuses will eventually deteriorate to the point that they will explode without warning, and without the chance to evacuate those living and working in the area. Homes, businesses, and schools (!) alike are affected by this hidden danger.
Even with these precautions, people still die. In Göttingen last summer, three professional bomb-diffusers were killed when a 1100lb bomb exploded as they were preparing it for disarming. I heard the explosion from nearly 2 miles away, though at the time, I didn't know that that was what I had heard.
It's not just the aerial bombs that cause problems. There are still millions of smaller unexploded ordinances stemming from World War II littering the country. Russian grenades pose a significant problem because they don't look like the grenades in movies, and therefore go unrecognized. They can show up in just about anybody's garden after a good rainstorm, and they're small and lightweight enough to be found and played with by children.
Although one could argue that landmines in Afghanistan are a bigger problem, I think it's important to communicate to people that, no matter where it is in the world--whether it be a third-world country, or the home of Europe's largest economy--war leaves a permanent mark. It is an outrage that people die as a result of a war they weren't even alive yet to witness.
Until the day that the very last explosive device is disarmed, I will have to deal with evacuations, traffic jams caused by restricted areas during disarmings, and maybe someday even delays in building my own house in order to have the building site searched for explosives. I hope I will never become a victim of World War II, killed by a bomb put there by my very own country.
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