Evacuations in a German Town

In the city of Koblenz in west Germany, several World War II bombs were discovered leading to the evacuation of over 45,000 people. Bomb squads were able to defuse two bombs, and dispose of a third. One bomb was an air mine that weighed 4,000 pounds and another was a smaller but high-density explosive. The third they detonated in a controlled manner. The three bombs were dropped by American and British warplanes during WWII and had been hidden by the Rhine River. When the water dropped last week, the bombs were discovered. A wall of over 2,500 sandbags was created in order to divert the water away from the bombs to ensure that "the two four-men teams [could] defuse the bombs precisely."

Germany is used to finding bombs, and just last year three members of a bomb squad were killed attempting to deactivate a bomb in Gottingen.