15,000 residents of three suburbs near Paris were evacuated on Sunday, April 19 for a Second World War bomb disposal operation. The bomb was destroyed by explosion.
An explosion and a loud noise, heard for kilometers around. The bomb dating back to the Second World War has just been neutralized in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) on Sunday, April 19. An hour later, we have access to the site where the bomb was located, of which little remains. “This is what we call the tail section. It was at the back,” describes Alexandre Brugère, prefect of the Hauts-de-Seine. Before its destruction, the bomb weighed 225 kg, half of which was explosives.
The bomb was discovered under a construction site and was being held in place by wooden beams. To defuse it, residents who lived around, within a perimeter of 450 meters, north of the Paris region, had to be evacuated. During the operation, firefighters were positioned on the rooftops and police officers cordoned off the area. 15,000 people were asked to leave. Rescuers went door-to-door in the buildings. “They are right anyway. We cannot know what might happen. We could either defuse it or it could explode at any moment,” commented a man who had just left his apartment.
The delicate operation began at 10:30 a.m. The bomb was transported by a construction vehicle and then placed in a hole. “Once it was placed in a hole, we tried to dismantle it. We couldn’t do it. So, from that point on, the only option left was to add more explosives on it and detonate it,” explained Christophe Pezron, director of the central laboratory of the Police prefecture.
Explosives were placed on the bomb. It was then buried and covered with sand to explode underground. “We heard a big boom, and that’s it. It didn’t even move,” recounted a nearby resident. How many bombs dating back to the last century remain buried under our feet? The figure is difficult to estimate. These devices are regularly found in France. According to experts, several decades are still needed to fully clean our territory of remnants from the past.
