The Army bomb disposal experts of the 2nd Engineer Regiment of Piacenza have neutralized an aerial bomb found in recent days during the work to restore the floodplain area of the Po River in the municipality of Brescello (RE) on the border with the municipality of Viadana in the Mantua area.
The device found is an aircraft bomb weighing 535 pounds (approximately 240 kg) containing approximately 124 kg of high explosive, with a chemical delay activation device (fuse) with an anti-removal device, which has remained unexploded since the Second World War.
Precisely in consideration of the specificity of the activation device that could have been activated following any mechanical stress and trigger the bomb, on the instructions of the soldiers of the 2nd bridge regiment, the prefectures of Mantua and Reggio Emilia ordered an immediate evacuation that lasted for 144 hours, of the population and movable property that were in a circular area with a radius of 826 meters (the so-called "red zone") from the point where the device was found. This resulted in the removal of approximately 350 inhabitants of the municipality of Viadana. Furthermore, the municipal and private roads were closed in the sections that fall within the evacuation area.
The clean-up operations, coordinated by the command North Operating Forces of Padua and scheduled without interruption, began at the end of the 144 hours coinciding with 10:00 on Monday 23 December without foreseeing, in order to protect the safety of the Piacenza engineers, the construction of protective works that would have produced vibrations capable of activating the fuse.
Furthermore, for reasons of further protection of people and movable property, the safety area has been extended to a radius of 1100 metres from the place where the device was found.
Army specialists went into action at 13:00 p.m., after the prefecture decided to give residents evacuated, with the utmost urgency, the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, the opportunity to access their homes to adopt some measures to mitigate the effects of a possible bomb detonation. It was a delicate series of operations, which the bomb disposal experts carried out at a safe distance, given the impossibility of removing the activation device, necessary to neutralize the device on site, reducing its effects to a minimum.
This was the third complex intervention on an aircraft bomb for the Piacenza bomb disposal experts since the beginning of the year. Also in 2024, there were over 270 interventions on war devices of all types carried out in the 13 provinces (Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Massa-Carrara, Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Grosseto, Livorno, Arezzo, Prato and Siena) under the jurisdiction of the 2nd bridge engineer regiment.
The Army contributes daily to the security of the country. Thanks to the technical skills of highly specialized personnel, it is possible to both carry out these interventions in total safety and intervene at any time, throughout the Italian territory to support the national community in the event of public disasters.