Bomb (Air Delivered) event in Bermondsey, Beatrice Road area, United Kingdom on Mon 9th October 2023

Residents and businesses were evacuated this morning after a World War Two bomb was discovered on a residential street in Bermondsey. At around 11:00 am on Monday 9 October, workmen from Thames Water discovered the bomb, which was deemed by an expert not to be dangerous, when doing work on Beatrice Road – a residential area off the Blue shopping area of Southwark Park Road in Bermondsey. At the scene, Ritchie Wilkin, EOD Unexploded Ordnance Consultant, who was brought in to assess the danger explained that an evacuation followed ‘solely as a precaution.’ He told us: “During these Thames Water workers’ excavations this morning, they scratched around and thought they saw something.” Mr Wilkin said his job is to be there just in case and provide cover if anything is found. This area in particular has a risk given it was bombed heavily during the Second World War. “We saw the item and identified it was something from the World War Two era,” he said. “We worked out it was fairly safe to move so we picked it up out of the hole and called the police.” Mr Wilkin said the bomb disposal team arrived at the scene ten minutes later. “They made the same assessment we’d made – that it was safe. But as a precaution, everyone was evacuated within a 100-metre radius purely for safety reasons.” He explained the police went around and did door-to-door knocks ‘within thirty minutes of the finding’ – including residents living in the houses on Beatrice Road and businesses on Southwark Park Road. But he added that it was over pretty fast. He explained: “Before any work like this gets carried out that involves digging into the ground – they have to assess the threat level of the place. It’s been worked out that about ten per cent of all bombs that were dropped or fired, failed to go off.” Asked about the likelihood of them finding another one in the area, he said there is simply no way of knowing – commenting: “That could have been a one-off thing that was imported from another area.” “However,” he continued, “what we do have to do now we have found this here, is make sure that every piece of intrusive work is now checked by an expert.” We also asked Mr Wilkin how likely it was for a bomb of that age to be dangerous this many years later. He responded, “Generally, an ordnance that was dropped or fired like this one can become corroded which means the part that initiates the device can seize up. It becomes rusty. “People have been walking over it and driving over it for 70-80 years and there was probably no risk of that ever going off,” he said, “because there’s enough hard-standing above it that was likely to set it off.” “I handled it so there was nothing in it that gave me cause for concern.” “Some things can be more volatile – this was not one of those times. This was a very small item – so it had obviously been fired up in the air and dropped back down again.” The bomb was taken away in an ammo case by the bomb disposal team to be disposed of later on and the roads are back open again. An enquiry has been put to the police regarding the incident. “Everyone was back in their homes ten minutes later and businesses were back open after the police said it was safe to do so.”