Traffic
Air bomb blown up near Legoland according to plan
Cars are jammed on the A8 in front of the Günzburg junction. The A8 between the Günzburg and Burgau junctions had to be closed due to a World War II bomb being blown up. Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The A8 had to be temporarily closed in the morning. The reason was the detonation of a WWII bomb nearby.
An aircraft bomb from the Second World War was detonated as planned near Günzburg on the state border of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg on Thursday.
Because of the blast, parts of the Legoland park there were temporarily closed – as well as the busy Autobahn 8 (Munich-Stuttgart) and a federal highway. The bomb was detonated at 10:25 a.m. and the closures were lifted ten minutes later, a police spokesman said.
The bomb was discovered on Wednesday in a commercial area next to the amusement park during soil investigations. It was filled with 30 kilograms of explosives and could not be defused or removed by the bomb disposal service. Therefore, it was blown up on site in a controlled manner. There were no injuries and no property damage, the police reported.
An evacuation zone of half a kilometer has been set up around the site since Thursday at 7:00 a.m. The motorway closure itself was reduced to around 45 minutes. Traffic jams formed in both directions, at times up to around five kilometers long. The traffic situation returned to normal in the late morning.
In addition to the companies in the industrial park, the German Legoland park and the campsite and holiday village of the amusement park were also in the evacuation zone. These areas were first cleared before the police then directed the vehicles off the highway. A helicopter was also used to search the exclusion zone for people. Ultimately, as announced, the whole campaign was completed by 11:00 a.m.