Police warn residents in Zehlendorf with loudspeaker vans
In Zehlendorf’s Fischerhüttenstraße Luft, the acrid smell of burnt wood hangs in the air, and the rotor blades of a police helicopter can be heard circling in the sky. The residential area on Krumme Lanke is only a few kilometers away from the scene of the fire in Grunewald. A Berlin police van drives along Fischerhüttenstraße at walking pace, with four loudspeakers installed on the vehicle’s roof.
“There is a Warning to the public‘ comes from the loudspeakers. Due to the fire that broke out at the police detonation site in Grunewald, there was a danger to life in the immediate vicinity of the fire, and the extinguishing work would continue. The police announcement recommends: “Due to the smoke development, we ask you to close all windows and doors and not to go into the danger zone.”
Almost all residents of Fischerhüttenstraße seem to heed this warning, most windows are closed. On this Friday morning, the streets of the residential area are empty. Only one man walks his dog. Thorsten Wegner woke up immediately when the first firecrackers exploded between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. from Wednesday to Thursday.
“I heard loud bangs, shortly after which an air wave rustled the trees in my garden,” he says. Between 4 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. he heard further bangs at regular intervals. The pensioner had never heard of such noises before: “It sounded like streetlights blowing up.”
Wegner has lived in Zehlendorf for over 50 years. At that time it was on the blast site accidents like this have never happened before, in the neighborhood almost everyone knows the explosive site. “After the fire, one should reconsider whether it makes sense to keep the site so central in the city.” he was accepted in his neighborhood: “There must be a safe place in Berlin where experts can blow up dangerous bombs.”
However, Wegner would like the fire department to widen the firebreak around the detonation site. “Besides, there should not permanently stored 25 to 30 tons of firecrackers and bombs from World War II become,” he says. “It’s unnecessarily dangerous.”
Susanne Kohler and her husband also live near Krumme Lanke and were shocked when the first detonations were heard. “My husband and I were worried about our house”, she says. “We didn’t know what the bangs were.” The couple stared at the sky for two hours trying to figure out which direction the explosions were coming from. “We wondered how much material had to go up there that it could bang loudly for two hours at a time,” she says.
It wasn’t until 6 a.m. that they found a warning about the fire online and a newspaper article about the fire. Susanne Kohler and her husband have only been living in Berlin for two years. They have no sympathy for the detonation site of the police. Kohler says: “It’s completely absurd to blow up fireworks and old ammunition in a forest near housing developments.”