Over 2,000 explosive that date back to World War II were collected on Saipan and were detonated yesterday.<\/p>\n
Yesterday the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services along with the U.S Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 5 Detachment Marianas set up for the detonation of 1,000 uncovered unexploded ordinances (UXOs) that date back to the Second World War.<\/p>\n
DFEMS captain Paul Sasamoto said that the detonation would take two days to complete. The detonation process continues today at the Marpi area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just set up a 1,000 pieces of UXOs that have been laying here since World War II that we have recovered\u2026. we\u2019re detonating one today and again tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sasamoto said that DFEMS has collected about 2,000 to 4,000 pieces of UXOs in the last four months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re removing a thousand pieces and again tomorrow\u2026it took about four months to collect the amount of UXOs \u2026all over the island,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During the detonation process, although roads were blocked off, a few tourists and a few locals still managed to enter the detonation area.<\/p>\n
Sasamoto wanted to advise, for future reference, that all tourists and locals remain cautious during detonation sessions and to also report any uncovered UXOs to the department.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have a detonation, please stay away from the area\u2026and if you find UXOs lying around, please call 911 or call the fire department, secure the area, and make sure no one enters the area until we arrive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to DFEMS spokesperson Derek Gersonde, it is common practice to detonate explosive remnants of war uncovered on Saipan that was dug up from ongoing construction projects.<\/p>\n
Detonation of uncovered explosives ensures safety for the community because it is sometimes unknown whether the explosives are still active or dormant after being buried for decades.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said the detonations are done probably twice a year or depending on how much has been collected.<\/p>\n
Gersonde and a couple of the DFEMS personnel present yesterday mentioned that a lot of the detonated explosives were uncovered at a construction site behind the Triple J.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over 2,000 explosive that date back to World War II were collected on Saipan and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":303459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}