Demining service

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The Demining Service ( EMD ) is an independent department of the Austrian Federal Ministry for National Defense and is responsible for the recovery, identification, defusing, transferring and destruction of war material from the time before 1955. The defusing service of the Interior Ministry is responsible for more recent explosives .

Since the end of the Second World War , the demining service in the territory of the Republic of Austria has recovered and destroyed around 25,000 tons of war material, including around 20,000 aerial bombs - duds . There are currently around 1,000 missions a year. Similar tasks are performed by the ordnance clearance service and the explosives departments of the state criminal investigation offices in Germany, and the army's munitions disposal unit in Switzerland.

In 1951 he was one of the winners of the Karl Renner Prize .

organization

The demining service when recovering ammunition

Since January 1, 2013, the demining service has been part of the Ministry of Defense and set up there as an independent department. The move to the defense department took place as part of the 2012–2016 consolidation package . 15 officers are active in the demining service, divided between the headquarters in Vienna in the Biedermann-Huth-Raschke barracks and the two branch offices in Hörsching and Graz . The head of the demining service is Wolfgang Korner.

From 1946 to 2001 the demining service was subordinate to the Federal Ministry of the Interior as part of the General Directorate for Public Security and from 2001 to 2012 as part of the Federal Criminal Police Office . Until July 2013, the Vienna headquarters were located in the Rossau barracks together with that of its sister service, the defusing service of the Federal Criminal Police Office .

There are twelve emergency vehicles. Internally there are specialized parts for diving and alpine missions.

Most of the time, the ammunition is defused, transported away and later collected at military blasting sites, for example at the Allentsteig military training area . Some things have to be destroyed on site due to the danger they pose. Infantry ammunition from both world wars is destroyed by annealing.

Demining cases

In 2003, while an aerial bomb was being defused on a railway site in the city of Salzburg, a tragic incident occurred in which two demining officers were killed and another was seriously injured.

On March 25, 2011, a British 500 lb (approx. 250 kg) long-term detonator bomb found during excavations at Europaplatz in front of Graz Central Station was detonated. Due to its location - it was brought to the surface by the excavation - numerous panes of glass were broken all around. In the course of the same major construction site to lower the tramway and renovate the street underpass, bombs were also found on March 24th and 30th, 2013 south of the main train station building, resulting in extensive closures. The bombs come from drops by the Allies in 1944 and 1945 on the tracks of the GKB and Hauptbahnhof.

On August 21, 2013 the EMD detonated a 250 kg US bomb from World War II in the mountains near Hüttschlag im Pongau, Salzburg, because one of the two detonators could not be removed. The bomb had been found by chance a month earlier there at an altitude of 2000 m on a scree slope near the Hubalm. It could have been dropped by a possibly damaged bomber on the return flight from Attnang-Puchheim or Linz to Italy in order to save fuel.

Case statistics

In the first half of 2013 the demining service had around 400 missions, almost 200 of them in Lower Austria. In 22 cases, dud bombs with a mass of over 50 kg were the cause, but mostly - smaller - grenades. These included 7 diving missions in waters. Relics only had to be blown up on the spot 16 times.

In 2012 there were 1,010 reports of discovery or perception, and in 2013 the demining service was deployed 947 times.

Due to numerous construction projects and a winter with little snow, the demining service deployed 1,123 times in 2014. According to federal states, 575 missions took place in Lower Austria in 2014, 135 in Styria, 116 in Upper Austria, 92 in Burgenland, 72 in Vienna, around 50 in Carinthia and Tyrol, and around 20 each in Salzburg and Vorarlberg. Around 35 tons of explosive war materials were transported away . The diving group recovered around 8 tons of war relics from lakes and rivers in 20 missions with more than 200 diving hours. A large part in September and October from the Ossiachersee , furthermore from Wörther- and Weißensee, all in Carinthia, as well as waters in Upper Austria and Lower Austria. The alpine group was deployed twelve times, where around 30 kilograms of war relics were recovered or blown up. The twelve emergency vehicles covered around 258,000 kilometers.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ordnance disposal and mine clearance ( memento of January 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) of the Swiss Army.
  2. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, December 13, 1951, sheet 2230.
  3. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, January 26, 1952, sheet 111.
  4. ↑ http://diepresse.com/layout/diepresse/mediadb/pdf/konsolidierung.pdf Austrian Federal Chancellery - Consolidation Package 2012–2016
  5. ↑ a b c d War relics: In the previous year over 1,120 missions. In: wien.orf.at. January 11, 2015, accessed January 11, 2015 .
  6. ↑ http://derstandard.at/1363709683744/Fliegerbombe-am-Hauptbahnhof-von-Graz-find Fliegerbombe found at Graz Central Station, derstandard.at of April 30, 2013
  7. ↑ http://salzburg.orf.at/news/stories/2599329/ Fliegerbombe im Gebirge blown up, ORF.at from August 22, 2013
  8. ↑ http://noe.orf.at/news/stories/2593002/ Demminungsdienst moved out almost 200 times, noe.ORF.at of July 14, 2013