EPA Urges Public to Turn In Munitions

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

cuchulainn

Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2002
Messages
3,297
Location
Looking for a cow that Queen Meadhbh stole
Call 911? Isn't that a bit overkill? :scrutiny:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/14bb4a64c0cc07db8525717e0051a686!OpenDocument

EPA Urges Public to Turn In Munitions

Release date: 05/25/2006

Contact Information: David Sternberg, (215) 814-5548

PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is urging all citizens who may have picked up unexploded munitions from the Elkton Farm Firehole Site, near Elkton, Md. to call 911.

“We’re concerned that people having unexploded munitions could get seriously hurt,” said Charles Fitzsimmons, EPA’s coordinator of cleanup operations at the Elkton Farm Firehole site. “If you have any unexploded munitions, call 911. Someone will come and get them from you.” Fitzsimmons said no one but trained experts should attempt to dispose of munitions.

When residents call 911 to turn in munitions, trained specialists from the fire or police department will come out and get the items at no cost to residents. EPA became concerned about citizens possessing unexploded munitions when the Ventura County Star reported that earlier this year, a teacher in California had part of his hand blown off by a 40 millimeter round of ammunition. The teacher had found the ammunition several years ago and believed it to be safe. The teacher kept the unexploded ordinance on his desk and one day it exploded when he hit the desk with his hand.

Since February, EPA has been conducting cleanup operations at the Elkton Farm Firehole site, two miles west of Elkton, Md. on Zietler Road. Cleanup crews are using magnetic locators to find metal in soil in the firehole area. When metal is detected, the area is checked to uncover the objects that are there. To date, EPA has found and removed 107 pounds of munitions and 1,033 pounds of non-munitions scrap-metal. Three 81- millimeter mortars containing inert material have been found and detonated in place. EPA expects to find additional mortars on the site.

The site consists of an open field that has historically been used for agricultural purposes,
except for a brief period during or around World War II. At that time, Triumph Industries which manufactured military munitions, used the site for burning and disposing of waste explosives.

#
Click to expand...
 
As much as I understand your reaction, no, it's not overkill.

Parts of San Diego that are now suburbs or natural parks where people hike, bike, fish, climb and ride horses were once bombing ranges. There have been a number of expensive and painstaking cleanup efforts over the years, and most of the UXO are gone now. Still, heavy rains sometimes erode away hillsides and expose new live shells.

In 1983, an 8-year-old boy was killed and a 12-year-old injured by one, here in San Diego (Tierrasanta neighborhood). That incident led to the most extensive cleanup operation. Similar incidents have happened around the country.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache...tillery+tierra+santa&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

The EPA really is looking out for the safety of citizens, in this case. It's not overkill.

My old girlfriend worked on the big Tierrasanta cleanup project as a wildlife biologist. They did so much work in some rare natural open space parkland that they carefully trimmed plants rather than stripping them and even relocated any animals they found so they wouldn't leave a dead environment. The EOD/UXO guys are some real characters.:)
 
Unexploded munitions aren't small-arms rounds. What they're referring to are the sort that might contain a good bit of now-unstable explosives. At best, just a primer popping someone's hand like the teacher, at worst, something like an entire dud aerial bomb that could take out a building. Unstable old munitions of that sort DO require the bomb squad with the concrete can and all. Places where there were WWII airfields often have finds of shells and rockets in the surrounding areas as suburbs are built.
 
Yes, I understand the nature of the problem and the size of the munitions.

It just seems that calling 911 is odd. Leave the area and call the police immediately, to be sure. But this isn't an emergency. Will they explode just sitting there (assuming you don't pound a desk with them or something)?

I suppose the EPA is trying to deal with the fact that different jursidictions have different departments do bomb squad duty, and the local 911 operator likely knows who that is.
 
different jursidictions have different departments do bomb squad duty, and the local 911 operator likely knows who that is
Click to expand...

This is probably the case, since EPA is a Federal agency, and bomb squads are local.

Also, it IS an emergency, because if you see some UXO on a hiking trail and think, "I guess I'll just e-mail somebody about it on Monday morning," there might be a troop of Cub Scouts ten minutes behind you and someone could die. Some trails here are like department store escalators, they're so busy on weekends.:) We're lucky to have a number of good hiking and climbing spots inside the city limits, but with 1.3 million people in the city, some places are well-used.
 
ArmedBear and Third_Rail.

Understood. :)

It would be interesting to know how often 911 operators deal with this sort of thing and whether they'd recognize the danger if Joe calls and says, "Hey, I've had an old WWII AAA round hanging on my basement wall since 1957..."
 
As interesting as I find old military ordnance, there's no way I'd want anything to do with a "dud" explosive, be it rocket, bomb, shell, or grenade. These things CAN go off unexpectedly, decades after being fired, dropped, or whatever.
 
It would be interesting to know how often 911 operators deal with this sort of thing and whether they'd recognize the danger if Joe calls and says, "Hey, I've had an old WWII AAA round hanging on my basement wall since 1957..."
Click to expand...

Now THAT is another question...:)
 
Found one in the basement....

My S.O. inherited an older house that has been in her family for nearly 100 years now. After we moved in here a few years back, one day we decided to go on a cleaning expedition in the basement. All kinds of older tools & other stuff down there, and while we were trying to organize it i came across a box that had a live 75mm anti-tank shell in it. :what: We figured it must have come home from the WWI service of the grandfather.

What the heck he was thinking keeping the thing in the house all that time was anyones' guess. Anyhow, the LEO's i called said they weren't getting paid enough for this, lol ,so they called the ordinance disposal guys up from fort Dix. They told us that they get called out for stuff like this all the time. Who knew? But that one time was more than enough for me.
 
The Elkhorn emergency services must be ready for these calls. The vast majority of departments are NOT and you should NOT call 911 for UXB's. I know of two situations involving unexploded shells up here found from the an old village site that the USN had shelled during an altercation with the locals. A special team from the Air Force had to come in and destroy the shells. Ordinary bomb squads are not trained to deal with rotting old military explosives, and unless someone is holding up a bank with one there's no justification in calling 911. Use the regular office line and call around to find out who deals with the problem in your area and just leave the thing alone until then.
 
You just never know. I remember when a bunch of nasty stuff turned up in D.C. around American University. Here's a link to a very long article and a couple of snippets.

www.washingtonian.com/health/00/groundzero.html

"A few months later, on January 5, 1993, construction workers digging trenches for new houses in Spring Valley a half mile northwest of Feeney's home unearthed what looked like rusted bombs. In a matter of hours, Army bomb-removal units arrived by helicopter from Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. With gas masks on their hips, they determined that the canisters were World War I-era chemical mortar rounds and 75-millimeter shells. Some were live and might contain mustard gas, a lethal chemical that caused blindness, skin blisters, and internal and external bleeding in 400,000 World War I soldiers."

"Washington isn't the only area with buried munitions. Old ordnance is believed to be buried at more than 200 sites in 36 states."
 
Cosmoline: The Elkhorn emergency services must be ready for these calls. The vast majority of departments are NOT and you should NOT call 911 for UXB's.
Click to expand...
Ah yes, this is Elkhorn-specific, isn't it? Good point.

Of course, that raises the question: Why the specific attention to Elkhorn if there are hundreds of similar sites around the USA?
 
I can't recall specificly where in Baltimore it was, but IIRC there was a big stink over UXO being found south of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, MD. It may have been a year or 2 ago, but I do remember it recieved a fair amount of coverage.

UXO is no joke, and they aren't talking about unexploded ammo for small arms, either. I know I wouldn't want to mess with them. Now if some surplus artillery was found, say a 75mm howitzer...:evil:
 
this stuff turns up all the time on the WW1 battlefields in France & Belgium. The locals are pretty blasé about it and leave it by the side of the road until the army gets around to taking it away. They don't plan on running out of work for centuries yet.
 
Perhaps French and Belgian kids (and adults) aren't as excited to "blow sh-t up!" as Americans.

Some of us over here tend to be a bit more, well, rash.:evil:

the canisters were World War I-era chemical mortar rounds and 75-millimeter shells. Some were live and might contain mustard gas
Click to expand...

Now THAT is some scary Shi'ite, there.
 
I often fish in an area called Dundee Creek, and another called The Gunpowder River (Both just off of the Chesapeake Bay here in Maryland). My buddy and I were amused by the constant thunder of munitions from Aberdeen Proving Ground until we wanted to fish in a small cove with warning signs," DANGER! Unexploded ordnance!"

I suspect that there's WAY more of this stuff out there than we can really guess about.....:eek:
 
It just seems that calling 911 is odd. Leave the area and call the police immediately, to be sure. But this isn't an emergency. Will they explode just sitting there (assuming you don't pound a desk with them or something)?
Click to expand...

Ahh I see.. you don't misunderstand the severity of the problem, you misunderstand the way 911 is used most places.

If your locale has 911 service, they expect it to be used for anything that requires dispatching police. Yeah, that mortar round you fired may keep till tomorrow if nobody touches, but it is still an emergency. If you called the main office for any municiplaity that is relatively busy, they likely would ahve told you to call 911 about it.

I'll give you an example of how it breaks down in my area for when you call or do not call.

Ex1) You need to get the paperowkr filed to get a permit that requires police input. (FID card, want ot organize a protest, etc). You call the regular police number.

Ex2) You see that a big piece of something has fallen off a truck onto a main road. you call 911.

Ex3) the Gray area. Around here we ahve a pothole hotline for part of the year. Lets say you have a whell/tire eating pothole on exit ramp X. During the proper time of the year, you call the hotline. during the rest of the year, you call 911 some places, but not other places.

Is the munition super time critical? No. However, for it to NOT be time critical, people really need to leave it alone. The emergency isn't the potential explosion that may never happen, but that access to the munition needs to be controled soon.
 
Does anyone recall the thread posted on THR not too long ago about the teacher who used an unexploded munition as a paperweight?

Remember? He used the bloody thing to squash a bug crawling across the desk and BOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unexploded artillery shells and bombs and grenades are bad news.

hillbilly
 
I know that in the suburbs north of Detroit, the police seem to appreciate it if you call the local PDs desk for anything short of a bonifide EMERGANCY.

I've called the PD (front desk) on a number of occasions, ranging from stray dogs, loud parties/music, broken down vehicles, someone locking thierselves out of a car, even on break-ins and accidents that didn't have injuries (after the fact). I was never told that I should have called 911. Most of the time the police seemed thankful that I dialed the front desk for something that could be assigned a lower priority.

The only 2 times I dialed 911 were to report a drunk / erratic driver. Both times the police appreciated that it was an urgent / immediate situation that needed an immediate responce.

As for unexploded ordanance? I would think it would depend on the situation. I'd call the local PD, explain what the item appeared to be, where it was, and let them determine if it warranted immediate responce or something less than that.
 
Back in '76 when I was at Camp Lejeune, it was decided that they would dredge some canals around the base.

Some were overflown by various artillery firing/impact areas and so the EOD guys were contacted and present on the dredges as they did their work, just in case a short-round or two came up.

This affair took MONTHS longer than planned because of all the short rounds being dredged up. Instead of the planned few..they were in the hundreds.

A live UNfired round...no problem. Fired DUD round....SCARY STUFF. Be careful out there...
 
Yeah live shells full of nerve, mustard or even just HE would be enough to ruin your day and probably a few days of anyone within 50 yards of you. That sort of stuff is no joke.

There is weepy stuff in the news all the time from <insert 3rd world country> where <insert muslim name> lost <body part> after he found unexploded ordinance and tried to drag it home and show mom.

I still hear stuff in the news where families will have houses built over old ammo dumps/bombing ranges/etc and people will come down with symptoms of chemical weapons exposure before someone puts 2 + 2 together and finds the crap buried all over the place and leaking into everyone's drinking water.
 
If your locale has 911 service, they expect it to be used for anything that requires dispatching police
Click to expand...

But the munitions don't require dispatch. It's not an emergency and it's not a bomb being used in a criminal enterprise, so unless they have a special crew to deal with old dud shells, the police really have no reason to get involved. But if you call their office they may be able to send you in the right direction.

My brother went through all this, and another fellow I know in town did as well.
 
I think that this is what they are really trying to prevent by wanting you to call 911:

There is weepy stuff in the news all the time from <insert 3rd world country> where <insert muslim name> lost <body part> after he found unexploded ordinance and tried to drag it home and show mom.
Click to expand...

When I was in Okinawa, the locals were always digging up UXO, Both in Oki and the Mainland. 1000lb, 500lb, 155mm, you name it. We even had a bunch of 5" WP rounds wash up on a reef and ignite! :eek: Caused quite a stir with the locals. 'Course this was after we had just dropped some LUU-2's in someones backyard.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

D
  • Locked
(HI) Ammo in Wai'anae waters no problem, NOAA finds
Replies
0
Views
290
Drizzt
D
B
  • Locked
Allegations that "green" ammunition more hazardous than lead
Replies
8
Views
929
MD_Willington
M
Back
Top