Bombs Away

We have very limited local news sources here in English. I've found a couple of website that are printed in English, but that is about it. As for late-breaking or up-to-the-minute news though, we are out of luck. So, it came as quite a surprise to me when at playgroup yesterday I learned that a HUGE WWII bomb had been unearthed in Budapest. When I say huge, I really mean it, over 2 tons! During WWII, US bombers dropped over 8,000 tons of bombs on Budapest. Odds are that 1 in 12 failed to detonate and explode. So here we sit, 60 years later, on some live WWII bombs.

Anyway, the latest bomb found was in a construction site in District 9. This is the district we had dinner in on Sunday night with Keesha & Lee and it is where they live. The bomb was discovered late Monday and over 16,000 residents within a 1 kilometer radius of the site were evacuated as of 9:00am Tuesday as removal experts moved in to defuse and/or remove the bomb. Poor Keesha had to rush out of her apartment without many supplies (for the 2 little ones) and was not able to return until late last night.

After removal of the bomb to a secure site, they found that the massive bomb's ignition device was removed sometime after WWII. That was not the case for a smaller 1,000 lb bomb discovered in District 13 just a few weeks ago. It was an American GP fragmentation device with 300 kg of TNT and amatol, capable of destroying the entire neighborhood. Thankfully, it was defused without incident.

After learning about these recent events, I have scoured the internet for more information and found that this seems to happen a couple times a year. From what I can find, all the bombs in Budapest have been successfully defused. Still, I remarked to Kyle that stories like this just make my head spin in wonder that we actually LIVE here! It also makes me think of the tragedy of war and its lasting effects for years and years. What a remarkable history lesson we are living.