Join the Conversation
Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more
A 250-pound bomb was safely removed from the garden of a local man's house in Cam Lo District, Quang Tri Province Wednesday morning by a Project RENEW team after a couple days of excavation work, the team reported.
Last Friday, when Tran Van Deo operated a tractor to plough land for growing rubber trees on his garden, a couple of scrap scavengers dug and saw the tail part of a big bomb pointing its head downward. It was just about 20 meters away from the man's house.
Too frightened, one of the scrap scavengers called Project RENEW's hotline phone number to ask for assistance. A RENEW team was deployed to the scene and they found the item was a 250 poud bomb which was dropped by the U.S. bombing aircraft during the wartime.
After a couple of days excavating, the bomb was removed from a depth of 1.5 meters and transported to the team's demolition site for later destruction after a render safe procedure was successfully applied.
This discovery of a bomb in the area is another indication for the U.S's heavy bombing of Vietnam during the war. Quang Tri Province was one the most heavily bombed areas because of its location on the both sides of the former DMZ.
Project RENEW is a partnership between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the Quang Tri Province People's Committee, with the goal of Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing the Effects of the War. Project RENEW receives funding and technical support from the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Defense, Norwegian People's Aid, Trauma Care Foundation, the Humpty Dumpty Institute, the government of Taiwan, foundations and other institutions, and many individual veterans and donors.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is the nonprofit organization authorized by the U.S. Congress to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., which is the most visited memorial in the nation's capital.