'Tis the Season for Bollards and Barricades in Berlin and Beyond

The seasonally secure Breitscheidplatz Christmas market Berlin 

It’s beginning to be a great big fortress
Sandbags everywhere
Take a look at the new steel fence, a tried and true defense
‘Gainst truck attacks within the public square

It’s beginning to be a great big fortress
Threats are evermore
But the scariest thing you see is the carnage that might be
On your own front door

It's Christmas time once more, and that means Berlin and 70-plus other cities and towns in Germany are setting up Christmas markets. Ever since the 2016 truck attack on crowds at the Berlin market, the seasonal decorations of those markets have included anti-ram vehicle barriers. Yes, steel baskets filled with sand bins are now as traditional as hot mulled wine.

Here's a German press report on how the hanging of the bollards is proceeding this year - Extra security measures in place for terror-hit Berlin Christmas market:

It's been almost two years since a lorry ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin, claiming 12 lives, including the Polish driver of the truck, and injuring dozens of others.

Now, as the market at Breitscheidplatz, western Berlin, gets set to open on Monday November 26th, workers have been securing the area with huge steel baskets, reported local newspaper B.Z.

It’s just one of the new measures being put in place to make the area more safe.

Since Monday, workers have been building more than a hundred square lattice baskets on the sides of the square and screwing them together to form a row.

The baskets will form a protective ring made of steel, sand and concrete around the site that was hit by tragedy just days before Christmas 2016.

The steel baskets, called Terrablocks by experts, are part of a pilot project by the Berlin Senate, reported the Berliner Zeitung.

The Senate is investing €2.6 million in the new blocking elements, which will later become the property of the police.

In addition to the 160 wire baskets, which are connected together and when finished will stand along the side of the Christmas market, 13 heavy steel pedestals will be erected at another part of the square near Hardenbergstraße.

Meanwhile, 70 mobile bollards, so-called truck blocks, will be installed at the pedestrian entrances, leaving space for pedestrians - but none for vehicles.

The steel baskets are prefabricated and linked together 

Sand has the mass necessary to stop a truck

Those perimeter security arrangements look a lot better thought-out and more professionally executed than the rather haphazard ones we saw last year. Also, note that the German Federal government is funding the barriers this time, and that they will become the property of local police after the market closes, obviously for reuse in future years. The German authorities have evidently accepted the permanence of the security threat to public gathering places.

Merkelstein Monday: Not Much Subtlety In UK Christmas Markets

Britain has lots of Christmas markets. It also has a recent history of vehicle ramming attacks in public venues. So, how do the British do perimeter anti-ram barriers this holiday season?

My bottom line: they do them with no subtlety at all, and little actual anti-ram effectiveness. The new German fashion of gift-wrapped vehicle barricades has - with one exception - not spread to Britain. But they do present lots of guns, which surprises me. The recent spate of terrorist attacks seems to be making the British more accustomed to and accepting of armed police.

Are there really rings of steel surrounding the markets?

Heavy police presences could be seen in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Bath with armed cops patrolling the perimeters of festive attractions. Plain clothed officers will also mingle amongst the crowds of revellers in a bid to keep the nation safe from further terror attacks. The moves come after the Local Government Association warned councils to be vigilant this year with the terror threat level to the UK currently at "severe".

This means that an attack "is highly likely."

In response to those atrocities barriers separating traffic from pedestrians were erected on three of the capital's bridges. Similar measures are now be in place at major Christmas markets - including Manchester, Birmingham and London's Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park.

I think not. They look more like linked-together small traffic barriers, probably in normal use as mobile highway lane dividers, plus a manually-operated drop bar barrier. While I hate to judge based on just a few photos that don’t show the larger physical context, the configuration of surrounding streets, etc., that is one very weak ring of steel. Or concrete.

The UK police have announced plans for greatly heightened security measures:

Extra measures including armed police patrols, large concrete barriers and stop-and-search checks have been introduced at venues across the country.

Pedestrianised areas are blocked off to prevent vehicles ramming into crowds after ISIS fanatic Anis Amri, a Tunisian failed asylum seeker, killed 12 people and injured more than 50 when he ploughed a lorry through Berlin's Breitscheidplatz last year.

Heavy police presences could be seen in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Bath over the weekend with armed officers patrolling the festive attractions.

Plain clothed officers will also mingle among crowds of revellers as part of the heightened security situation.

I see the checkpoints and bag searches, etc., but I'm still looking for "large concrete barriers." Those small concrete blocks do not have the anti-ram resistance to stop a Berlin-type truck attack, believe me.

And then we come to Bath, where either they ran low on little concrete blocks and had to space them out, or else they expect some very wide trucks.

I mean, you could drive a bus through those openings. Why even bother putting the blocks up?

Only two British markets made an attempt to blend the barricades in with seasonal decorations, the way some German cities did this year. Leeds showed a flare for aesthetic physical security by rejecting concrete and using large soil-filled planters with actual plants in them.

Congratulations, Leeds. But the first place award goes to Hull, which really out-did even the gift-wrapped German barricades we looked at last week.

Well done, indeed. Genuine anti-ram bollards, and they're inside an innocuous disguise. Hull really knows how to hide anti-ram bollards.

In conclusion, Hull's perimeter security has a level of artistic and anti-ram legitimacy that even the Germans would be hard-pressed to match. The rest of the UK's Christmas markets seriously need to up their game.

Do They Ever Get Dizzy? German Police 'Mobile Terrorsperren' at the Leipzig Christmas Market

#Germany#ChristmasMarket in #Leipzig pic.twitter.com/Gp0Suh1LIy

—December 1, 2017

Via the Leipzig Volkszeitung

 

Merkelstein Mondays

Those are, without a doubt, the most decorative anti-ram bollards or planters I've ever seen. Put up in a German Christmas market (news article here), they form an über-aesthetic terrorsperren that ought to preclude a truck ramming attack this holiday season like the one that happened last year in Berlin, when an ISIS-influenced failed asylum seeker from Tunis killed 12 persons and injured 56.

Since such security measures in public gathering places have evidently become a new holiday tradition in Europe, I plan to feature them in a series of posts this December which I'll call "Merkelstein Mondays," after a new hashtag I saw today in German Twitter. Merkelstein = Merkel stones.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (Markets),
Ev'rywhere you go;
Take a look in the Merkelstein, saying to terror “Nein!”
High-visibility stripes aglow.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (Markets),
Police in ev'ry street,
But the prettiest sight to see is the bollard that will be
On your own front door.

Christmas markets are pretty much exclusively a European thing, I believe, with some exceptions for a couple of Canadian cities and maybe the American upper mid-west. But Merkelsteins of one sort or another are being introduced to high-traffic public venues of all kinds today. Pay attention when you go to large gatherings and special events and you'll see them.

Bollards aren't just for government buildings or U.S.-interest targets anymore. Bit by bit, one vehicle attack after another, everyplace is starting to look like the Blast-Proof City of Washington DC.