
Tuesday 22, August
Phosphorus WWII bomb catches fire after being removed from Spree
According to the Berlin Senate, there are still 4,500 unexploded bombs from the Second World War buried beneath the city. Nestled under our apartment buildings, wedged under tramlines, hidden beneath cinemas, churches, zoos, libraries, and submerged in our rivers and canals. Usually, they’re pretty harmless: A team comes to remove the device and it gets dumped out in Grunewald. But these are still bombs, and danger is not totally eliminated. The explosives can ignite, and that’s exactly what happened on Monday on the banks of the Spree in Berlin-Moabit.
The device in question was a phosphorus bomb, a smoke-producing explosive which creates an immediate blanket of phosphorus pentoxide vapour. When the fire brigade arrived, it was already burning and emitting smoke beside Moabit’s Lessing Bridge. Apparently, the bomb had been discovered by a “Schrottangler” – someone gathering scrap metal from the water. In order to prevent an explosion, the emergency services cooled the bomb with water, extinguishing the phosphorus which burns spontaneously when in contact with oxygen. When it was safe, an ordinance team was able to conduct a removal.