Hundreds Evacuated in Bath, England, After Wartime Munition Is Found

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/world/europe/bath-england-unexploded-world-war-ii-bomb.html

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LONDON — More than seven decades after World War II ended, unexploded munitions remain a hazard in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

In the latest such scare in Britain, hundreds of people in the historic and picturesque town of Bath were evacuated from their homes on Thursday afternoon after contractors discovered, under a former school playground, a 500-pound bomb believed to date from World War II. Some spent the night at a local racetrack.

On Friday, the authorities set up a 1,000-foot perimeter around the site of the bomb, the former Royal High Junior School in Bath, and closed a vast network of roads around it. They planned to place about 275 tons of sand around it, and then take it to a remote location, “where they will carry out a controlled explosion.”

Not everyone inside the evacuation zone was ordered to leave; some chose to remain, but were advised to “move to a safe distance” from the playground.

“Those who have remained inside the exclusion zone will be prevented from moving within 100 meters of the device for their own safety,” the local police agency, the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, said in a statement. “We recognize the disruption this incident has already caused to residents inside the exclusion zone and we’d like to thank them for their patience.

“Decisions to evacuate houses are never taken lightly but during these incidents public safety will always be our primary concern,” Chief Inspector Kevin Thatcher said in a statement. “We also appreciate the anxiety many in the local community may feel following the discovery device and the time required to remove it but we would urge people not to be alarmed.”

Bath, in southwest England, is a popular tourist destination, known since Roman times for its natural hot springs, and since the 18th century for its gracious Georgian architecture.

In 1942, the Luftwaffe bombed the city. A report from that time describes “wrecked churches and buildings”; “old women, limping and with freshly bandaged heads,” the “smell of compounded brick dust” and the “rank odor of wet charred wood.”

Even today, bombs from the war are found, often by workers digging at construction sites.

In August 2015, 150 people were evacuated after a 500-pound unexploded World War II bomb was found in the basement of a building site in Bethnal Green, in East London. In November of that year, another bomb from that era caused a scare at Spitalfields, a popular market, also in East London.

The danger posed by the bombs is taken very seriously because they still contain explosives, which can prove lethal. That has been a particular concern in Germany, which was heavily bombed by Allied forces during the war.

In 2013, as many as 20,000 people in Dortmund were evacuated so that specialists could neutralize a powerful “blockbuster” bomb, which, according to a report in Smithsonian Magazine, was powerful enough to destroy parts of a city block.

In 2014, a buried World War II bomb exploded at a construction site in Euskirchen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, killing an excavator driver and injuring eight other people.