In Germany every year about 5500 WWII bombs are defused.
According to a 2013 estimate there are about 100.000 left [1].
My personal experience - living in Munich, Germany - is that approx. one or two times per year I am late because of traffic problems caused by bomb disposal activities.
Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by NATO troops during maneuvers.
I had never experienced that in my first 32 years or so. But when I moved where I’m now living, within 5 years I had experienced three bomb defusings with mass evacuations (I’ve always been just outside the evacuation zone). No surprise, it was a strategically important place, so the Allies bombed a lot.
It‘s a bit of a local media spectacle, with the local newspaper running stories welcoming back the defusing team by name.
Now imagine what the people in Laos, Vietnam or Cambodia have to put up with. During the Vietnam war more bombs were dropped there than during whole World War 2.
Yeah its amazing how all over Europe after 70 years they still regularly find bombs.
The Wehrmacht also laid millions of mines but thanks to German obsession with administration those were all removed in a few years (with the "assistance" of German POWs)
Yup, to this day there are quite a few forested areas with warning signs [0] telling people not to leave the paved roads.
It's still a very real danger: Back in 2010 an old 1000 lb US WWI bomb, with a long time fuze, exploded one hour before the planed defusion near Göttingen, which already lead to the evacuation of 7000 people, killing three people, injuring another six [1]
Just 2 months ago another defusion, in Dresden, also partly went wrong but luckily nobody was injured [2]
> Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by NATO troops during maneuvers.
Blanks? As in blank small-arms ammunition and artillery rounds? I've never heard of them being a fire-risk before, or being dumped like that. They don't contain much explosive do they? How is this happening?
I don't know if they are really a risk but I know that there are a lot of them because I collected them as a child and they were not really hard to find after a maneuver, when they were sill shiny.
> Firefighters there have found their work hampered by explosions from munitions dating back to World War II, which were buried and had been undisturbed until the heat of the flames set them off.
My point was more that the explosions (blanks are loud) could have been caused by ammunition dropped long after WWII.
I can't help but think you're talking about expended brass, not blanks. One is functionally metallic debris, while the other is a small lump of explosives and a detonator inside a metal shell. Militaries tend to be much more stringent around policing the latter than the former.
> Militaries tend to be much more stringent around policing the latter than the former.
Not on large exercise ranges like those common in Germany.
Do you really think every single soldier collects every blank he ejected, that didn't initially fire/jammed, during the maneuver?
No, these are simply left behind, in all sizes and calibers, and for all purpose and effect are still "small lumps of explosives with detonator", just with some kind of malfunction preventing the regular way of triggering the donation, but they are still very capable of detonating.
My experience is from the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe it is really more stringent today.
We found the ammo not at designated exercise ranges like those around Grafenwöhr or Hohenfels but ordinary forests, fields and meadows where we children used to play.
We often found small batches and the ones I had in my hands were new and without scratches. My theory is that they
were thrown away after the mission because the guys were too lazy to carry them back to the camp, but I don't know for sure.
The expended ones are open at the tip to various degrees and can be found as well. I'm talking about the cleanly crimped close ones, the new and shiny ones. We collected them not only because of their shininess and there is a reason I now how loud blanks are;-)
My personal experience - living in Munich, Germany - is that approx. one or two times per year I am late because of traffic problems caused by bomb disposal activities.
Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by NATO troops during maneuvers.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindg%C3%A4nger