For the second time in two weeks, thousands of Hanau residents have to leave their homes because a bomb from the Second World War has to be defused. Last week, it hit the eastern part of the city center, this time the western and northern downtown and part of the northwest district will be evacuated. On Thursday, a 500-kilogram English aerial bomb was discovered during construction work on the pond path. The site is located near the Kinzigbrücke, which connects the Hanauer Vorstadt with the Frankfurter Landstraße.

Jan Schiefenhövel

Editor at the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In the area around it, around 17,000 people have to leave their homes for safety while the explosive device is defused. The evacuation is scheduled to begin on Sunday at 9 a.m., as the city administration announced on Friday. As a safety zone, the crisis team has defined a radius of around one kilometer.

Clinics and old people's homes in exclusion zone

What complicates the eviction is that in this area are also the St. Vincent Hospital as well as the homes Martin-Luther, Stadtteilzentrum an der Kinzig, Elisabethenhaus, Domicil Nordstraße and the Wohnstift Lortzingstraße. The security zone, as seen on Friday on a map published by the city on the Internet, is not circular. According to the municipality, this is due to the fact that the bomb is next to a building block. This has a shielding effect, so that behind it in a westerly direction the danger of an explosion is lower.

Where the borders of the restricted area run exactly, is announced with street and house number on the Internet under www.hanau.de. If you need help leaving your home, you can contact the city's citizens' telephone number on 0 61 81/6 76 60-20 00, which can be reached on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 20 p.m. and on Sunday from 8 a.m. The city will prepare halls as emergency shelters and, among www.hanau.de, communicate where these contact points are located. Due to the evacuation, a railway line has to be closed. The local trains from Hanau to Frankfurt no longer run after 12 o'clock. Long-distance trains are diverted via Offenbach.

The city is waiting until Sunday to defuse the situation, because then the shops in the city centre will be closed anyway. In the security zone are also the town hall as well as the district and the district court. According to the city, the bomb is located in such a way that it does not pose an acute danger for the time being. This leaves enough time for preparation.

When the defusing begins depends on how quickly the exclusion zone is cleared. The city appeals to the citizens: "Please leave your apartment, your house, because the faster it can be defused, the sooner everyone can go home." It is expected that the explosive ordnance clearance service can start its work at noon.