The Evacuation Story

Okay, so when I talked to Mom yesterday and she said to do a blog post about this, I told her there wasn't much of a story to tell. That was at about 1:45 yesterday afternoon. By the time we had everyone in bed at 9:00 last night, there was a story. So here goes...sorry no pictures...but that is actually a good thing.

Because we live at a military installation that used to once be a Revolutionary War fort, all kinds of things have happened around here over the years. Today, when the cadets blow things up, they do so several miles away from here. (Close enough that in the summer it sometimes still sounds like we are under attack and is a fun little reminder of the unique place in which we live, but far enough away that it presents no danger to our lives.) But, at one time, the area where we live used to be a range. Consequently, last summer there was a big "to do". After several years of studying the land, etc. etc. an unexploded ordnance team came and tromped all over a huge area on our side of post, looking for unexploded ordnance. There were precautionary evacuations as well as evacuations when they actually found some things. Most stuff was small, removed from the area, and detonated somewhere else.

Now, 6 months later, there is an expansion happening over at the middle school as well as at the hospital. The middle school has already been evacuated once due to them finding something during the excavations. Currently, they have been digging up the parking lot just above our back yard. Yesterday at 11am they found something there.

I drove up to my house at 11:05 with a trunk full of groceries to find an MP knocking at my back door. I was told that they'd found an unexploded ordnance and that we had to evacuate. He couldn't tell me how we would have to be evacuated. They were flying in a team from Ft. Drum to dispose of the ordnance. At the time, it was just our row of houses being evacuated. So, I drove around to my neighbor's and put stuff in her fridge and freezer. About 45 minutes later the MPs were knocking on her door because they now needed to evacuate a larger area. By this time they could tell us that they thought it would be about 6pm before we could return to our houses.

At this time, all I was really worried about was the inconvenience. I had gotten up yesterday with a long list of things I needed to get done, was already worried about being able to finish it all and now realized that I was going to spend my whole day just "hanging out". I was frustrated but not worried about our safety.

R and I went out to lunch since we couldn't go home and then I wandered around the PX for an hour before I had to start collecting kids from the school bus and school. Then it was off to the band building to hang out in the commons room. Meanwhile, some friends from church invited us for dinner so we went over there at 5:30. And this is when the story gets interesting.

On the way to our friend's house I stopped at one of the road blocks to talk to the MP stationed there and get an update. All he could tell me was that the team was still in route and they were now estimating that it would be 7:30 before we could get back into our house.

Shortly after arriving at our friends' house, my friend got a phone call from her neighbor who was in the hospital because she had just had a baby. They evacuated everyone from the hospital that they could, and then moved all of the patients to the far corner which is actually outside of the evacuation radius. Since she was still in the hospital, she had heard people talking outside of her door. They were saying that the bomb was so huge that it was going to have to be exploded in place and that the band housing was going to lose all of their windows. That was not good news.

For the next two hours we had dinner and sat around waiting to hear/feel an explosion but never did. At 7:30 we got a call that all was clear and we came home to find our windows and everything still in tact.

Then at 8:30 I got another call from my friend who had again spoken to her friend in the hospital. According to one of the security people that her friend had spoken with who was on duty in the morning when it was found, and then had just come back on duty that evening, the bomb was 18 inches in diameter and over 2 feet long and weighed around 25o pounds. (We had heard early in the day that it was 8 inches in diameter and over 150 pounds.) The rumor about them exploding it in place was the hospital staff speculating because it was so large, they couldn't fathom that it would be able to be moved. But, EOD are professionals and when they showed up they didn't seem phased at all my its size and where able to take it and explode it out at one of the ranges (far from post.) At which point they found that it was filled with a bunch of metal pellets, like ball bearings.

That news was very unsettling. I went to bed last night very grateful to be alive with my house still standing and my windows in tact. If all of the jack hammering they had been doing up there would have exploded that while I was sitting at my computer, I would not be writing to tell about it, my windows would all be blown out and part of my house might not be standing.

Now, prayers for the safety of our family have taken on a little different urgency. I wonder how many more things will be found in my back yard, or over at the middle school over the next couple years of these construction projects. Today, I am grateful that everyone was safe. I pray that we continue to be that way.