Final information on the bomb find
Joint media information of the Chemnitz Police Headquarters and the City of Chemnitz
All-clear in Chemnitz: At 11.23 pm, demolition expert Thomas Lange from the Saxony Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service gave the all-clear. The 250-kilogram American explosive bomb found on Monday afternoon had been defused.
"It went really well, without any problems. The smooth defusing hopefully made up for the long wait," said demolition expert Thomas Lange with a wink after his work.
This was preceded by evacuation measures within a radius of 500 metres of where the explosive device was found on the site of the former goods station on August-Bebel-Straße from 7 pm until around 10.30 pm.
The evacuations could not be carried out within the two hours initially planned. One reason for this was that quite a few of those affected remained in their homes and waited for the emergency services to ring the bell. Secondly, the evacuation radius was reduced in the course of the operation. Unfortunately, there were delays in passing this information on to the emergency services due to the reporting channels. The evacuations themselves went smoothly for the most part.
A total of 252 affected residents in the restricted area used the accommodation provided in the sports hall of the Chemnitz police sports club and in the Gotthold-Ephraim-Lessing primary school.
Also affected were the "Sachsenallee" shopping centre, which closed at 5 pm, and Chemnitz Central Station, where train services were suspended at around 6.40 pm. The railway lines were reopened from 11.30 pm, as were the road closures.
After the road closures in the vicinity of the site, traffic was blocked in the inner city area, mostly on the arterial roads. Public and local transport was also routed via the diversion routes.
A total of over 560 emergency services were deployed. In addition to 93 police officers from the police headquarters, these included around 200 riot police, including 100 police trainees, 30 federal police officers, 80 city administration employees, all 15 volunteer fire brigades in the city with 135 members and the medical task force stationed in Chemnitz with 56 employees. Helpers from the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) provided sufficient lighting at the site with a special mast.