Ordnance clearance service

An employee of the Rhineland-Palatinate ordnance disposal service inspecting a British 1.8-tonne air mine that led to an evacuation in Koblenz when it was defused on December 4, 2011 .

The Ordnance Disposal Service (KRD for short), also Ordnance Disposal Service (KBD or KMBD) or Munitions Recovery Service (MBD), is used for civilian munitions disposal in Germany .

Responsibilities

The ordnance clearance services are responsible for weapons that have become unconscious (parts and components of weapons intended for warfare, including ammunition and their ingredients) that were produced before the end of the war in 1945, as well as ammunition for the armies of the former Warsaw Pact. It is characteristic of careless weapons that they have not been properly stored, for example buried, sunk or improperly blown up. One of the main focuses of the ordnance disposal services is the defusing and disposal of duds - that is, ammunition used as intended and not used. In the case of found ammunition from NATO stocks, responsibility lies with the local police authorities, although this is regulated differently in the federal states. When it comes to the responsibility for securing former military installations, one has to look at the individual case when looking for responsibility. The allocation of costs for the implementation of these tasks is regulated by Article 120 GG in conjunction with the General Law on Consequences of War .

organization

The federal states are responsible for organizing the ordnance disposal service . Since it is a task of general security , the basic responsibility lies with the state interior ministries. The operational tasks are carried out by the police ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Brandenburg , Bremen , Berlin , Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein ), the fire brigade ( Hamburg ) or, in the case of the Lower Saxony ordnance disposal service, the state survey administration . In Rhineland-Palatinate , the ordnance disposal service is subordinate to the supervisory and service directorate , in North Rhine-Westphalia to the district governments . In Baden-Württemberg, the Stuttgart regional council is responsible for the entire state. In Thuringia , Hesse and Bavaria there are no state ordnance disposal services; these commission private companies and only reserve the right to supervise the authorized ordnance disposal companies.

Most of the federal states have issued state ordinances on the basis of their state administrative, police or security and regulatory laws, which regulate in detail suitable procedures for handling and in relation to ordnance.

Training of staff

Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service employees have very different training. The occupation of ordnance disposal is not a training occupation. Many employees of the clearing services and approved specialist companies are ammunition specialists or fireworkers trained by the former NVA or the German Armed Forces and have the training, examination and approval as technical supervisors in the disposal of ordnance and are usually authorized to blast . A special discipline is the evaluation of Allied aerial photographs, on which acts of war can be traced. Surveyors are often employed in this area. So-called clearance assistants or ammunition workers are deployed as unskilled, non-skilled workers and teammates of the skilled demolition experts. Despite a professional and maximally cautious approach, fatal accidents due to uncontrolled explosions occur time and again. In the years 2000 to 2010, eight ordnance clearers were killed in action, three of them alone in the detonation of an Allied 500 kg aerial bomb on June 2, 2010 in Göttingen .

tasks

The tasks of the ordnance disposal service consist of:

• Enlightenment (evaluation of aerial photographs , archive material, testimony) and on-site investigations
• Area exploration and certification of the freedom from ordnance
• Area clearance (here mostly the technical supervision of approved contractors)
• Elimination by dismantling / bomb defusing (defense against ammunition finds, risk assessment, defusing, transporting away, dismantling and destroying)
• Prevention (public relations work in schools and institutions with the aim of sensitizing citizens to ammunition finds)

Ordnance clearance in the North and Baltic Seas

The importance of the ordnance disposal services is clear from the annual reports: Even decades after the end of the Second World War, around 100,000 pieces of ammunition are seized and destroyed every year in Schleswig-Holstein alone. Due to the aging of the still dangerous ordnance , there is statistically one self-detonation per year in Germany . In addition, up to the 1970s, up to 1.8 million tons of war ammunition had been sunk in the German North Sea and the Baltic Sea alone, and so far only some of them have been recovered. In the recent past, also due to the increased environmental awareness of the population, this contaminated site has been perceived as a considerable danger.

Schleswig-Holstein, the federal state most severely affected by maritime hazards, is responsible for recording the danger and developing alternative methods of disposing of ordnance. Since 2008, the state government has been trying to develop solutions for this problem that affects society as a whole, with the participation of the other coastal neighbors and the federal government . On December 5, 2011, the working group operating under the umbrella of the federal-state measurement program presented its first report. The authors emphasize that an internationally standardized procedure for risk assessment should be developed on the basis of further studies. This process should be accompanied by monitoring the marine environment for any environmental impacts caused by the dumped ammunition. The annual update of the report of the Federal / is coastal countries Arbeitsgemeinschaft North and Baltic Seas (Blano) the permanent working group of experts ammunition in the sea has been set up under the auspices of Schleswig-Holstein. The updates are publicly available on the Internet under the title Ammunition pollution in German marine waters - developments and progress (year xxxx) (see section Literature). In the second update published in February 2014, the experts also emphasize the still inadequate knowledge of sunk ammunition and the lack of efficient recovery techniques. It is also clear that the work that has already started and is still pending in the area of ​​offshore construction activity for wind farms and cable routes will be influenced to a considerable extent. More than 30 tons of ordnance were recovered on a single cable route alone. This trend has continued even after the third progress report published in February 2015 by the Federal / Länderexpertenkreis Munitions in the sea. The fourth progress report "Ammunition pollution in German marine waters - developments and progress", published by the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of the Environment, shows further possible solutions. With the support of the Schleswig-Holstein state government and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel , a consortium from industry, marine and explosives research has been awarded the contract for a research project. The aim of the “Robotic Recovery and Disposal of Ammunition in the Sea” (RoBEMM) under the direction of Boskalis Hirdes is the development of an environmentally friendly, fully automatic and powerful recovery unit for ammunition on the seabed. The measure “Handling ammunition” has been included in the German program of measures for the European marine protection strategy. The current overall version of the overall report, which currently comprises more than 1,380 pages, is available on the website of the Schleswig-Holstein state government.

literature

• Ammunition pollution in German marine waters - developments and progress - annual reports on ammunition in the sea:
  • 1st progress report from January 2013
  • 2nd progress report from July 2014
  • 3rd progress report from July 2015
  • 4th progress report from July 2016
  • 5th progress report from March 2017
  • 6th progress report of April 23, 2018
  • 7th progress report of July 9, 2019

Web links

Commons : Ordnance Disposal Service  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Ordnance clearance service  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Ordnance disposal in North Rhine-Westphalia
• Ordnance disposal service for the state of Brandenburg
• Ordnance clearance service of the state of Schleswig-Holstein
• Munitions recovery service Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
• Lower Saxony ordnance disposal service
• Ordnance clearance service Rhineland-Palatinate
• F 045 Ordnance clearance service Hamburg
• Ordnance disposal in Bavaria
• Ordnance disposal in Baden-Württemberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ordnance Disposal Service brd.nrw.de
2. ^ Tasks and responsibilities of the ordnance disposal service polizei.brandenburg.de
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the forensic institute; Accessed May 22, 2017. 
4. ↑ [1] at the Police Administration Office; Accessed May 13, 2016.
5. ↑ [2] at the Technical Police Office; Accessed May 13, 2016.
6. ^ "Ordnance disposal in North Rhine-Westphalia" . "Ministry of the Interior and Local Affairs of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia". Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed on November 5, 2013: "" Since the handling of munitions requires special expertise, the state maintains a munitions disposal service at the Arnsberg district governments to support the local regulatory authorities: for the districts of Arnsberg, Detmold and Münster, Düsseldorf: for the districts of Düsseldorf and Cologne . "" 
7. ^ The disposal of ordnance in Baden-Württemberg. Accessed December 20, 2018 (German). 
8. ↑ Example Bavaria: www.gesetze-bayern.de para. 5.2 Announcement of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior of April 15, 2010, Az .: ID4-2135.12-9, reference: AllMBl 2010, p. 136. Accessed on September 5, 2013.
9. ↑ Ordnance clearance service: Danger to life every day. NDR.de, June 6, 2013, archived from the original on October 22, 2012 ; Retrieved June 6, 2013 . 
10. ↑ World War II bomb kills three in Germany. BBC News, June 2, 2010, accessed January 6, 2013 . 
11. ↑ Ammunition pollution in German marine waters - developments and progress (as of 2012) , page 4 , PDF file, accessed on February 12, 2013
12. ↑ Bund-Länder-Messprogramm , Report 2011/3 accessed on February 12, 2013
13. ↑ RoBEMM ( Memento from June 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
14. ^ EOD Services - Boskalis Hirdes. Retrieved July 12, 2020 . 
15. ↑ Federal / State Committee North and Baltic Sea (BLANO): Action sheets for the German report according to Art. 13 MSFD. (PDF) In: MSRL. Federal / State Committee North and Baltic Sea (BLANO), March 30, 2016, accessed on June 13, 2016 . 
16. ↑ Ammunition in the Sea: Ammunition in the Sea , accessed on February 12, 2013