400 Pounds of Bombs Unearthed at Odyssey Middle School in Orlando
Army to Blow up Ordnance Today

Rich McKay | Sentinel Staff Writer
January 5, 2008

A munitions cleanup at Odyssey Middle School during the holiday break unearthed more than 400 pounds of World War II-era bombs and rockets along with 2,000 pounds of debris on the school grounds and under the running track.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to blow up the bombs and rockets today at the southeast Orlando school. Residents should expect to hear several large blasts.

Among the items found since Dec. 27 are about 50 fragmentation bombs, several rockets, a rocket booster and a 37 mm cannon, according to the Army Corps.

" 'Wow,' I thought, 'that's an awful lot of materiel,' " said Orlando City Commissioner Phil Diamond, describing his reaction to the photograph of some of the bombs and debris dug up at the school.

"What this tells me is that this shows how urgent this [the cleanup] is," said Diamond, whose district includes the former Pinecastle Jeep Range. "I don't know if everyone has grasped the magnitude of this." Diamond shared the Army Corps' photo of the excavated munitions with the Orlando Sentinel.

Orange County schools Superintendent Ron Blocker was not available for comment Friday evening, but in a news release he said: "I want to thank the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for doing what they said they would do and continuing to assure the safety of our school."

Schools spokesman Dylan Thomas said Blocker was aware of the volume of materiel uncovered at the school before issuing the statement.

Ralph Hazlett, whose granddaughter Mackenzie attends sixth grade at Odyssey, was flabbergasted by the photo released Friday.

"Oh, my goodness," he said. "What upsets me the most is that they [Army Corps] kept saying over and over that there was nothing under the school. But look here. Gosh."

Hazlett said he trusted the Army's assertions before, but now he's not comfortable with his granddaughter returning there Monday.

"Now I'm really uneasy about it," he said. "How can they dig this up and say she and all the kids are safe?"

The Army used the former 12,483-acre range in the 1940s to train bombardiers for combat. The Army Corps announced its cleanup of the area during the summer.

Residents then discovered that parts of the Vista Lakes, Tivoli Woods and Crowntree Lakes communities were built atop the western fringe of the former range. Munitions, including unexploded ordnance, have been found in backyards and construction sites outside the range boundaries.

An Orlando Sentinel investigation later found that developers had borrow pits on the range and used that dirt for construction in the entire community.

Odyssey, which has about 1,300 students, was built in 2001 atop the northern half of a jeep track that had been used for gunners' target practice.

This fall, corps officials assured residents and concerned parents that the school and their neighborhoods were safe but that they would conduct an investigation on the school grounds.

About 31 pounds of bomb debris, along with several potential live bombs, was excavated from the schoolyard during Thanksgiving break.

The planned detonations today won't end the corps' work at the school as originally planned. A news release issued Friday by the corps said that given the amount of materiel uncovered, the excavation work will continue on weekends indefinitely.

Army called in over charity shop 'grenade'


An army bomb disposal unit has been called and a main road closed after staff at a North Tyneside charity shop found what appeared to be a hand grenade among their donations.
The device - which was later found to be a replica - was given to the shop on Station Road in Forest Hall last week.

Sgt Steve Pick of Northumbria Police said the grenade had foreign writing on the side and was indistinguishable from a real bomb.

He said police closed Station Road and began evacuating a neighbouring care home.

They also called the Ministry of Defence centre at Didcot, which sent an army bomb disposal unit to the scene on Tuesday.

"It looked absolutely no different from an ordinary grenade," he said.

"You have to treat these things as serious because if it goes off it can be really serious."

He said the police were seeking to trace the person who had donated it.

Station Road has since reopened and residents have been returned to the care home.



Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2008, All Rights Reserved.

Metal Detector Leads Boys To Live Grenade

POSTED: 5:28 pm EST February 16, 2008

PACE, Fla. -- An 8-year-old boy and his friend found something dangerous while searching for buried treasure with a metal detector -- a live, World War II-era hand grenade.

Sidney Mathis and his friend found nails, bolts and a toy Hot Wheels car by sweeping the detector over a grassy field near their apartment complex on Thursday.

But it was their other find that alarmed Sidney’s father, Chris Mathis. The man arrived home Thursday to find the boys about to put the grenade into a bucket of water.

He grabbed the grenade and dangled it outside the window of his sport utility vehicle as he drove away from the apartment complex.

Mathis eventually had second thoughts.

“I hit a bump and that’s about the time I realized moving the grenade wasn’t the brightest thing to do,” he said.

Two members of an Air Force explosives unit from nearby Hurlburt Field in the Florida Panhandle took the grenade and destroyed it Friday morning.

Sidney’s treasure hunting days aren’t over, but his father hopes he learned a lesson.

“We told him he could find jewelry and things like that, but he couldn’t play with bombs,” Chris Mathis said.

WWII Bomb Explodes at Czech Work Site; 1 Person Injured
The Associated Press
PRAGUE, Czech Republic Feb 19, 2008 (AP)

A World War II-era bomb exploded Tuesday at a construction site in the southeastern Czech Republic. One worker was injured, officials said.

The 220-pound bomb was set off by an excavator in the outskirts of Znojmo near the Austrian border, police spokesman Jan Krepela said. The worker operating the machine suffered light injuries, Krepela said.Unexploded bombs and ammunition from World War II are still unearthed from time to time in the area, Krepela said.

WWII is never going to be over.

You may have seen it in newspapers. Last week at a recycling plant, something went "BOOM". They ended up finding about 30 reasonably current anti-tank rounds.

As the story unfolds, it appears some guys collected unexploded rounds on the sly from the Fort Bragg live fire ranges. Can you imagine prowling around there after hours looking for goodies ?

Then the collectors had second thoughts and sent the rounds off to the recyclers.

Dave

Civil War Relics Collector Killed in Richmond-Area Blast
Wednesday, 20 Feb 2008, 6:12 AM EST

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Authorities remained on the scene Tuesday of a Chesterfield County neighborhood where munitions exploded and killed a homeowner who sold Civil War relics.

Chesterfield County Police said neighbors reported the explosion Monday afternoon after hearing the blast and then finding the victim fatally injured in his backyard near a detached garage.

Police identified the victim Tuesday as Samuel H. White, 53.

Authorities found other unexploded military ordnance at the house, and evacuated about two dozen homes nearby until authorities could determine the area was safe. Police spokeswoman Ann Reid said the evacuation would remain in effect indefinitely.

Tuesday afternoon, police continued to collect and detonate ordnance.

White ran a Web site called Sam White Relics. The site contains photos of various relics for sale, such as Civil War artillery shells, cannonballs, bullets and other artifacts.

White said on the site he "will disarm, clean, and preserve your Civil War period and earlier military ordinance" for about $35 a piece.

"I've done approx. 500 artillery projectiles and still have all my fingers (I must be doing something right, knock on wood)!" the site states.

Neighbor Brian Dunkerly told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that a chunk of the ordnance flew into the air and smashed through the front-porch roof of his home about one-quarter-mile away. The piece of metal -- weighing close to 15 pounds -- then shattered his glass front door, hit the interior wood floor and bounced to the ceiling before coming to rest in the center of his living room.

No one was injured in the Dunkerly home.

Someone donates box of grenades to Goodwill store
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
The Associated Press

Police are searching for a person who left four hand grenades in a Westmoreland County Goodwill shop.

The grenades were found yesterday afternoon in a plastic box. The Allegheny County Bomb Squad rushed to the scene in Rostraver Township.

Police say the grenades were of a military surplus variety. They were removed from the store.

The store's assistant manager, Dawn Graham, says the grenades may have been in the store for days before they were discovered.

thanks for these info

sebastien.

Woman Brings Grenade Into Police Station

2 days ago

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — The police department was briefly evacuated after a woman decided she should bring in a hand grenade she found.

The unidentified woman handed it to an officer Thursday after finding it while cleaning out a relative's belongings. The officer immediately took it outside the building and police cleared the building until the bomb squad took it away and detonated it about an hour later.

The grenade appeared to be live.

"When we countercharged it, it went boom," bomb squad supervisor Lt. James Brandon told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Grenade With Pin Found At Home

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- A woman in Melbourne found a hand grenade with a pin attached while checking through some boxes stored in her garage, according to police.

The homeowner told police that she was looking at some boxes belonging to her deceased husband at her home on Swanna Drive when she found the rusted, military style hand grenade.

She called police and the Brevard County Sheriff's Office bomb squad removed the device, the sheriff's report said.Bomb squad members performed an X-ray of the item but were unable to determine if the grenade was live.

The woman said her husband had served in the Navy in the 1970s but did not know who the device ended up in the garage.

There were no injuries in connection with the incident.

Old War Mine Blown Up at Beauty Spot

Posted on: Sunday, 6 April 2008, 18:00 CDT

THIS is the moment bomb disposal experts blew up a marine mine at a South Wales beauty spot.

Children enjoying the sunshine and dog walkers were ordered off Southerndown beach after the spiked device was washed up on the Glamorgan Heritage Coast at Witches Point, near Dunraven Bay, at 11.45amyesterday.

A walker on the beach reported the discovery to Swansea HM Coastguard, which called in the Royal Navy bomb disposal squad.

The Plymouth-based squad was in South Wales on an unrelated matter and travelled to Southerndown to secure the scene.

They detonated the mine at 3.10pm.

Coastguard watch officer Bernie Kemble said: "These mines aren't very safe and we don't know where it came from. They are very unstable.

"The beach was closed by the Llant wit Major coastguard rescue team and cordoned off. There were a few people there at the time and we managed to move them back to a safe distance."

Mr Kemble described the device as an old World War II anti shipping mine, adding it was "the cartoon-type with spikes."

It may have lain undisturbed for almost 70 years and it is unclear why it surfaced in the Bristol Channel or what prompted it to appear yesterday.

Mr Kemble said there were no unusual tides or currents and the sea was relatively calm.

He added: "It depends on many factors - where it came from, how much it has moved or has the sand moved over the last couple of years, how much it has rusted, whether it leaked and air got in and what type of mine it was."

(c) 2008 South Wales Echo. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

German mine washed up on beach is detonated in front of holidaymakers
Last updated at 22:50pm on 12th April 2008

A huge 1,500lb Second World War German mine washed up on a beach was detonated by bomb disposal experts yesterday.

Authorities set up a one-mile exclusion zone around the device after it was spotted in mud by a fisherman on Thursday.

The 10ft-long, 26in-wide mine, dropped by a German aircraft, was due to be detonated on Friday night but technical difficulties delayed the operation. A crowd lined the esplanade at nearby Burnham-on-Sea to watch the mine explode on Stert Island in Bridgwater Bay, Somerset.

Mark Newman, who runs a community website, witnessed it.

He said: "It will be talked about for years to come. We saw a huge plume of water gush into the air, which was followed by a loud bang and 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from the crowd."

The bay is home to 190 species of birds and sites of historical interest, including 12th Century fish weirs.

Dr Helen Phillips, chief executive of the environmental public body Natural England, said: "The area provides important feeding grounds and roosting sites for wintering waterfowl and waders."

WHOAA,,thats some explosion!! Fish fry time!

More impressive than the video of the Coventry bomb a few posts up, certainly. That was kind of tiny.

OOPS!: From The Times
April 26, 2008
Navy loses German bomb

Royal Navy divers spent a fourth day looking in vain for a huge Second World War bomb after losing it on the seabed. The German bomb, weighing 1,100 lbs (500kg), was washed up by heavy seas on Monday and taken out to sea to be detonated. Karen Sarrow, who lives near by, said: “People are saying that it’s like something out of Dad’s Army.”

"Uhhmm, yeah..sarge..ya know that 1,000 lb bomb we found?..ahh..well, ya see..what happened was.."

Bilko!!

Man's Legs Severed When WWI Cannon Round Explodes

01:48 PM PDT on Thursday, May 1, 2008

By kgw.com and AP Staff

CRESWELL, Ore. -- Officers say a World War I cannon round exploded as a man tinkered with it Wednesday night, and his legs were severed in the accident.

Police released this photo of evidence.

Vernal Miller, Sr. was trying to separate the casing so he could recycle the brass when it blew up, according to Lane County Sheriff's Lieutenant Byron Trapp. It happened in the back room of his girlfriend's mobile home in Creswell.

Miller, 49, was rushed to the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene with life-threatening injuries. Chris Oldham, 41, was in another room when the munitions exploded. She wasn't hurt.

Trapp said Miller was injured by a 37mm cannon round from the World War I era.

"These munitions were fired from single and multiple barreled mounted rifles. This particular piece was manufactured in Paris, France in September of 1916. They were a very common WWI souvenir and are still plentiful in Europe, the US and Canada. The shell carried either a high explosive or black powder burst charge that was initiated by an impact fuse in the nose, very similar to a large rifle primer," he explained.

Trapp went on to issue a warning that when anyone discovers munitions they are not familiar with, or that are of military origin, they should stay a safe distance from the device and immediately notify law enforcement for analysis.

Tokyo Neighbourhood Cleared for Bomb Disposal
Last Updated: Sunday, May 18, 2008 | 11:33 AM ET
CBC News
More than 1,600 people were evacuated Sunday from the Tokyo suburb of Chofu to allow for the safe removal of an unexploded bomb.

The bomb was found by a construction crew back in March.

It's believed to have been dropped by a U.S. B-29 bomber during the Second World War.

Residents stayed at nearby schools while bomb disposal experts did their work.

Tokyo's fire department said the evacuation order was lifted once the rusty one-tonne bomb was defused and taken away, an operation that took about two hours.

Video here: http://www.javno.tv/index.php?id=3419t4a533591763dfa