Back in September, I was having a chat with a colleague at his desk, when we heard an enormous crash outside (it sounded structural - we actually looked out the windows overlooking the parking garage to see if it had collapsed, or if a construction crane had fallen over or something).
But everything outside was peaceful - we had a beautiful clear view of Stiepel and the Kemnader lake (and Ruhr river), with the towns of Witten and Hattingen on the opposite side of the valley.
It took an hour, but it turns out the internet told us what happened:
An unexploded WWII bomb went off in Hattingen at a construction site when a backhoe scrapped it while digging out some foundations. 17 people were hurt (acoustic shock) but no one was gravely injured. The house being dug out was quite damaged, and I bet the backhoe didn't do too well either... Here`s an article about the incident.
The Ruhr river valley suffered a lot of bombing during WWII since it was a nexus of heavy industry and manufacturing (as well as coal mining). You would never know it now... Unless someone discovers unexploded ordinance the hard way :(
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1 comment:
last week the bomb squad had to remove unexploded ordinance from a home in kitchener. apparently it was a forgotten piece of memorbilia from WWII.
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