Caution! Highly explosive!

German rental specialist HKL Baumaschinen has provided a compact excavator for a construction project with a difference in Northern Hesse.

The 80-hecatare site, which will house a new business park, had to be checked for - and cleared of -unexploded wartime bombs and other ammunition before it could be made safe for the building work to go ahead.

After taking aerial photographs of the site, an area of 120000 sq metres was probed, leading to the discovery of an anti-aircraft gun, grenades and firebombs still partially equipped with their igniters.

To dig and clear the site, the HKL Rental Park supplied an 8 t compact excavator retrofitted with a certified bulletproof glass window.

Marcel Bartsch, HKL’s client advisor for rental, said: “Safety is an absolute priority, and we have specially equipped machines and many years’ experience in the field so we best assist and support our customers.”

HKL said that clearances of this type are necessary in a number of towns and cities in Germany before building work can commence.