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Cologne under pressure: 20,000 people evacuated during major bomb defusal!
On June 4, 2025, around 20,000 people in Cologne-Deutz have to be evacuated to defuse three World War II bombs.
Cologne under pressure: 20,000 people evacuated during major bomb defusal!
What a turbulent day in Cologne! Today, June 4, 2025, the planned defusing of three unexploded bombs from the Second World War is causing an enormous evacuation effort in the Deutz district. An estimated 20,000 residents have to leave their homes and workplaces to support safety measures around the dangerous contaminated sites. How Wetterauer newspaper Reportedly, numerous important facilities are on the evacuation list, including around 60 hotels, a hospital and several museums.
The radius of the evacuation zone includes some of the most central points of the city, including the Hohenzollern, Deutzer and Severins Bridges, which cross the Rhine. The Cologne-Deutz train station will also be affected, which will have an urban and regional impact on Rhine navigation and train traffic to the main station. Police and the public order office will carry out the evacuation operation, which could prove to be the largest since the Second World War.
Special precautions for the population
The measures are far-reaching. Patients at Eduardus Hospital must be relocated within the building; Around 150 people, including ten in the intensive care unit, are part of this rescheduling. Around 1,000 patients were discharged the weekend before the operation. The exact evacuation zone extends over a radius of around 300 meters around the site near Leiblplatz, where a bomb weighing five hundredweight was discovered RTL West reported.
Particular attention is also paid to the Cologne transport companies, which are expecting significant restrictions due to the closures on the light rail and bus lines. The KVB strongly recommends that citizens avoid the city center on evacuation day.
RTL and other media affected
The effects are far-reaching, even the RTL broadcast center has to be evacuated. Therefore, the viewer and news landscape does not remain untouched: the program “Point 8” is no longer available, while the two news formats “Point 6” and “Point 7” are broadcast live from Cologne. Other programs, including “Point 12” and “RTL aktuell”, will be relocated to Berlin, and exciting formats such as “Explosiv” will be pre-recorded. For RTL Deutschland, this is the second evacuation within a short period of time, after the company also had to evacuate for similar reasons during “Point 12” in April 2024, which underlines the urgency of the situation.
Those responsible appeal to citizens to adhere to the safety measures that are essential for everyone. In addition, a citizen telephone was set up to provide information on evacuation.
In plain language: In Cologne today the motto is, “Safety comes first!”, and everyone should be aware of the situation, because the danger of blind bombs is not new in the metropolis. Experts estimate that hundreds of such dangers still lie dormant in the ground, which will require future bomb disposal operations, as has already been the case daily news determines.