Bomb clearance makes life safer in ex-war zone

AFTER finding unexploded bombs when he was digging the foundations of his new house last month, Ta Thanh Dat knew what he had to do.

The man in Dong Ha City, the central province of Quang Tri, called the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team and asked for help.

The team comes from Renew – a cooperative programme between Quang Tri and foreign NGOs to restore the environment and address the consequences of war, especially unexploded ordnance (UXO). The main foreign partner in the programme is Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).

As soon as they received the call, EOD arrived at Dat’s house, searched and finally found 22 unexploded bombs and more than 350 small bullets.

The unexploded ordnance and bullets were moved away from the construction site and deactivated safely.

Dat said the team’s professional and quick response helped him feel safe and confident that his new house would be built on schedule.

Earlier, in January, teams from the NPA/Renew project searched for UXO across 865,000sq m in Hoang Ha Hamlet, Gio Viet Commune, Gio Linh District of the same province.

The teams found and deactivated 111 cluster bombs and other unexploded ordnance.

Le Viet Mau, a resident, said almost all of the more than 100 households’ land and almost all their farmland was contaminated with UXO, which put people in danger.

“We are so happy to see unexploded ordnance removed, ” he said.

The central province of Quang Tri is most heavily contaminated by UXO in Vietnam following the three decades of bombardment in the resistance war against the United States.

Eighty-two per cent of Quang Tri’s total area are contaminated by UXO. Wartime bombs and landmines have killed more than 3,430 people and injured 5,100.

In the last 26 years, the province has received nearly US$144mil (RM576mil) from international organisations to remove the bombs. Thanks to this funding, UXO has been cleared on a total land area of more than 214 million square metres.

Part of the funding was spent on detecting cluster bombs on 449 million square metres and identifying more than 446 million square metres of land contaminated by UXO.

Vice-chairman of the province People’s Committee, Hoang Nam, said the province and its partners had been making great efforts in bomb clearance.

“The year 2018 was the first year the province reported no accidents relating to UXO, ” he said.

The province has worked since 1995 with international organisations such as the US-based Peace Trees Vietnam, the Mines Advisory Group, Clear Path International, and Norwegian People’s Aid on clearing UXO and supporting UXO victims.

Peace Trees Vietnam was the first NGO granted permission to operate in Vietnam to implement bomb clearance.

Early this year, the provincial People’s Committee approved a plan to implement an action programme for settling the consequences of UXO for the 2021-25 period.

Vietnam has spent approximately US$549mil (RM2.19bil) on bomb and mine clearance in the past decade.

UXO was scattered over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by US bombers, at three times the volume of ordnance dropped in World War II, according to Project Renew. — Vietnam News/ANN