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Live ordnances found in San Antonio
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Posted on Feb 05 2005
Police assistance was requested at a construction site Friday morning after crews digging along Beach Road San Antonio found hundreds of pounds of live ordnances from World War II.
“We thought it was just one batch but we dug deeper, about six feet and found over a thousand rounds,” said EFC Engineers and Architects’ inspector James Benavente.
Benavente immediately contacted Department of Public Safety and the Historic Preservation Office, whose representatives confirmed the location was a foxhole—a small hole dug to protect a soldier or sniper from enemy fire—and the rounds of ammunition were from World War II.
“While excavating, the spotter spotted a few bare ones,” he said. “They manually dug and kept digging and found more so we called DPS and HPO.”
DPS spokesman Eric F. David, who with Sgt. Juan Diaz responded to the scene as bomb technicians at about 9am, indicated that the ammunitions were .50 caliber and are still live.
“The total net explosive weight estimated is about 600 pounds of ordnance from .50 calibers to 100mm warhead,” David said.
One bullet actually popped when being dug but Diaz said the pressure was fortunately weak and not as strong as if the bullet was brand new.
David said the ordnances will be brought to a bomb shelter in Marpi, and will remain there until detonated.
“We’re going to take these to the bomb shelter in Marpi and secure them there,” he said. “We’re hoping that by the end of the month or first week of March, we’ll collect all the ordnances that we found and recovered and put them in a hole that we dug out in Marpi, a bomb site, and detonate all the live ordnances that we secured.”
David and Diaz were certified as bomb technicians in June last year and are members of the Explosive Response Team, tasked with responding to any calls of live ordnance, securing the site and securing the ordnances at the shelter.
