For over 50,000 residents of the city of Augsburg near Munich, this Christmas meant packing a bag with the essentials and leaving the house. In one of the biggest of its kind in post-war Germany, people in Augsburg were moved out of their homes to a safe zone on Sunday.

Thousands of people had to leave Christmas presents and decorations behind. They were forced to evacuate while authorities disarmed a large World War II aerial bomb. The bomb, dropped by the British Air Force back in the 1940s, was found last week during construction work.



Via Daily World

The bomb, known as a blockbuster, was the largest of its kind dropped by the RAF during aerial attacks on Germany in the second world war. It weighs 1.8 tonnes and, if exploded, could damage all buildings within a one-mile radius.

Police explosives experts defused the World War II relic just before 7:00pm local time Sunday. The work crews had given up their Christmas to work on the explosive.

In addition to its website, the city made use of Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to keep citizens informed about the situation. Updates were also distributed via radio and televisions stations, and loudspeaker announcements made locally.

Augsburg experienced heavy bombardment during World War II by Allied air forces. The discovery of unexploded bombs in many cities around Germany is a fairly regular occurrence as are such preplanned evacuations. We are sure glad that the whole situation played out without any danger.