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Germany | Major evacuation in Cologne after second world war bombs discovered
(www.theguardian.com)
As someone living two cities over, I can tell you this is a real and big thing. While German specialists still disarm WW2 unexploded ordinance about three to four times a day, and there is no week where there is not at least a minor evacuation because of this somewhere, this one is big. Since 08:00 local the roads are closed, nobody gets (back) in, police, firemen, etc are going from door to door to alert people living under rocks.
This is more or less in the city center of the biggest city in the state; if not a large part of the area (1km radius) was the river Rhine, it would be way more than the 20k people that need to move out. On top of that, there are 58 hotels, a hospital, senior citizens homes, loads of companies and factories, schools, kindergardens. And everyone must go.
Three bridges crossing the river are in the evacuation area, most importantly the Hohenzollern bridge, which not only connects the two big central train stations (Cologne has one on both sides of the Rhine), it is one of the most frequented east-west connections for trains in this part of Germany. The western station, which is the official Central Station of Cologne, will still be accessible, as it is just outside the evacuation area, but it will only have access to the track network from one side. The other station Köln/Deutz is closed, and with it the north/south train links along the river Rhine
The famous Cologne Cathedral is just outside the evacuation area. But a lot of historic buildings, museums, theaters, the Philhamony are inside the zone.
Nobody can say when this will be over, as they can only start to disarm the bombs as soon as everyone has left the evacuation zone, and there are always some people who refuse to leave and have to be forced out, which takes a lot of time and efforts. I would not be surprised if they could start the actual disarmamant process sometime this night.
And the bombs themselves have been extraordinary, too: Two unexploded bombs with tricky fuses and a metric ton of explosives each right next to each other, with a smaller (500kg) one not far off.