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Well, OK, it was almost 70 years ago and we all know why. A 250kg bomb of U.S. origin from World War II was found on a construction site right in the city of Munich (where the real Oktoberfest takes place in a few weeks). It had a chemical fuse, still active - and too dangerous to defuse on spot. This leads to evacuation of about 2500 inhabitants and closing down a whole quarter of the city, affected was a circle of 1 kilometer radius. Fire department and police led the people out (only one had to be forced, most were total cool), disaster response groups of Red Cross and Maltese Cross cared for those who found no other shelter. EMS and volunteer disaster transport groups assisted those who were not mobile enough. Several staging areas collected forces of fire, EMS, police and German Federal Agency for technical relief. Some emptied fire stations were filled with volunteer departments from outside areas. After two days trying to defuse and finally preparing one of the biggest explosions Germany had seen since WW2 within a major city, they forced the bomb to detonate in the evening of August, 28th. The following video was released by a private citizen and shows the impressive fire ball: After the blast there were several fires on the roofs and in the streets. First reports talked about "Chaos", but Munich FD was able to get all of those fires under control in less than 30 minutes. There were no victims or injured persons. Some structures were damaged, but only slightly - however, most windows broke in a radius of several 100 meters. Civil engineers checked all buildings and there was only one with significant problems. Though, several apartments still are uninhabitable due to broken windows, shattered glass and damaged furniture. For those still without an intact home, the city authorities organized hotel rooms. All emergency shelters could be closed a day later. The images of the first 30 minutes show streets in flames: http://www.focus.de/..._did_40939.html and http://www.merkur-on...ia&firstslide=1 . Main cause for the fires were hot splinters and the hay they used for controlling the explosion. In preparation they piled up around 100 tons material in earthwalls, sandbags and special mats for directing the explosion. Hay bales were used to damp the explosion and catch splinters, which obviously worked rather good despite beeing the cause for several fires. But, as said above, it was under control rather fast. During this events there were several other remarkable emergencies despite the "normal" daily emergency business in a million people city, including a severe collapse on a construction site (totally unrelated to the bomb) wtih multiple injured persons. I wasn't involved in the whole setting but know several key players very well. EMS hadn't much to do, only to transport several handicapped and sick people. A lot of work was done by the volunteer groups who prepared the shelters and cared for the evacuees. It's not uncommon for german cities to have several buildings evacuated due to old WW2 remains from time to time. According to a spokesman of the State of Bavaria in 2011 there were around 1000 findings with 40 tons of explosives, mostly ammunition from WW2 but including 214 unexploded bombs. In Munich there were around three findings this year, but all others could be defused on spot. 2010 in another german city, Göttingen, there were three fatalities among bomb experts when they tried to defuse a bomb with the exact same mechanism as the Munich bomb now. I myself was involved in two incidents of WW2 bomb findings around here, where we had to evacuate some streets. So at least this bomb is history and I hope my next incident report will be about an interesting shift on Oktoberfest. See you there!