Residents of a Swiss village can be evicted for more than a decade due to a WWII ammunition depot

The secret history of the 2018 elections in 84 color pages.

I’ll buy it

Residents of the Swiss city of Mitholz may be forced to leave their homes for more than a decade because 3,500 tons of ammunition left over from World War II must be removed from a weapons depot dug into a hillside.

The Swiss government on Monday adopted a recalculated $ 1 billion plan to dispose of a dangerous arsenal from World War I, which will only take a decade to prepare, so deportation is not expected to take place until 2030 at the earliest.

A huge underground ammunition depot in the Bernese Alps was established during World War II in the event that Switzerland was hit by a military attack despite its neutral status. The idea was that in the event of an attack on the country, the soldiers would dig into the mountains and resist the entire system of secret underground passages as well as ammunition hidden in the mountains.

Some of the 7,000 tons of ammunition accumulated in the event of war exploded on December 19, 1947, shortly before midnight, destroying huge debris in the surrounding residential buildings, killing nine people. The explosion also destroyed the city center and the train station.

The settlement was soon rebuilt, but 3,500 tons of ammunition (air bombs, mines and hand grenades) remained in the warehouse, dug into the hillside, the condition of which is increasingly worrying.

Under current security regulations, the ammunition depots at Mitholz pose an “unacceptable” threat, authorities said. According to the government, a recent health survey revealed a higher risk than that identified in the 1949 and 1986 surveys. Previous studies also indicated that there was a risk of explosion, but it was later considered that it would only affect the military installation itself, and the removal of aged ammunition would be too risky, mainly for geological reasons.
The government on Monday ordered the Defense Ministry to develop a plan by fall 2022 to evacuate and compensate the roughly 170 people affected by the evacuation. According to the government, local authorities and residents also approved the massive disarmament plan, for which 900 million Swiss francs (300 billion guilders) have been earmarked. (MTI, AP)