Live munitions linger in harbour

Bedford magazine explosion, sunken ships still pose danger decades later

STÉPHANE MASSINON

Halifax's other explosion still poses health and safety risks, even 62 years later, says the organizer of a sea-dumped munitions conference.

Terry Long, who is putting together the First International Conference on Chemical and Conventional Munitions Dumped at Sea, spoke about the weapons still lingering after the two-day 1945 magazine explosion in Bedford.

"The explosion that went up for the two days would have thrown 20-millimetre rounds, mortars, depth charges, naval shells, bullets, all that kind of stuff and much, much more," Long said yesterday in an interview.

The result is that a lot of munitions are still laying around Bedford and Dartmouth, he said, and with so much work being done without experts nearby to make sure there are no munitions uncovered, someone could get seriously hurt.

"I'm surprised nobody has been killed in Halifax to date. And you can quote me on that," Long said.

Munitions dumped at sea certainly aren't limited to Halifax Harbour and its environs, but can be found all around the province.

Long says there are 3,000 munitions sites around Nova Scotia, including shipwrecks and even a site that contains depleted uranium near Halifax Harbour.

"I think the depleted uranium site is something that's not very well known. I know there's a lot of people talking about it internationally, and they are going to come to the conference to talk about it," he said.

Long wouldn't specify the exact site of the depleted uranium, other than to say it is near the mouth of Halifax Harbour.

The shipwrecks are ships that sank, were run aground or "other ships that were purposely sunk with munitions on them to dispose of the munitions.

"You can easily find wrecks off of Halifax such as the City of Vienna, which ran aground on Black Rock during the Second World War. The better majority of the ship is gone, and the only things remaining in about 20 feet of water are the munitions, which you can easily swim over," he said.

Or else there's "one site in particular off of Sydney Bite that has been documented as receiving over 180,000 tons of conventional munitions documented by DND records."