Moscow panic following discovery of World War II weapons cache
Published: 17 March, 2010, 20:09
Edited: 18 March, 2010, 03:51
TAGS: Military, Accident, Prime Time Russia
Two large residential buildings were evacuated and all traffic halted in Moscow's northwestern district after a large cache of World War II shells was discovered by repair workers.
The discovery came at 14:00 local time as workers were installing a new heating pipe.
According to Russia's Emergencies Ministry, a total of 916 76-millimeter shells, 40 of which had detonators installed, were found on the site.
Around 200 residents, who were evacuated into a local school, have returned to their homes after the excavation ended.
They say such dangerous findings are pretty familiar to them, as a huge firing ground was situated in the area during World War II.
The de-miners have now stowed the shells into trucks which will take them to a shooting range outside Moscow where they will be detonated.
A representative of the Moscow military commandant's office earlier told RIA-Novosti news agency that around 200–300 pieces of unexploded ordnance are being uncovered in Moscow every year.
17.03.2010, 15:31
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Oops. I hate it when that happens. Here in US we have been closing down redundant military bases for a few decades, and sometimes houses get built over old bombing ranges or caches. A town near Sacramento got a scare a few years ago when somebody working at the rail yards dug up an old bomb that had been overlooked from a transport accident decades earlier. This time there was no explosion, thank God. Another town near here allowed a real estate developer to build a housing complex in an area that partially overlapped an old testing ground for a closed military base. I think the military may have cleaned out the old ordnance before releasing the land. Maybe. If I lived near there, I certainly would not dig very deeply into my garden. With all of the turmoil of World War II in Russia, there must have been dozens or maybe even hundreds of bomb caches. Hopefully the bomb disposal experts will be successful in cleaning them up without any deaths.