SPECIALIST police officers from the NSW rescue and bomb disposal unit were called to Inverell this week after a small amount of suspected explosive was found in Flanders House, near the Inverell RSM Club.
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Local police sergeant, Jay Tuckwell said police were called to Flanders House on Monday after a small glass vial, labelled as an explosive, was found in the rear of the building.
Sgt. Tuckwell said police secured the vial, which they thought could have been left over from the Second World War, and contacted the specialist unit based in Sydney.
“We contacted the rescue and bomb disposal unit to get some advice off them, and they ended up sending a team up to assess it themselves,” Sgt. Tuckwell said.
The officers carried the vial, which appeared to be in a tattered suitcase, to an open area behind the RSM club and safely detonated it.
“It was labelled as an explosive from around the World War II era,” Sgt. Tuckwell said.
“It has now been rendered safe, so we can’t confirm that, but it was labelled as a Second World War era type of explosive.
“This is stuff that can sometimes degrade over time and can become unstable and therefore more dangerous, which is why we needed to get the experts in to deal with it.
“Sometimes if they degrade like that, they can ignite or detonate while they are being moved so the idea is to move it the shortest amount of distance and dispose of it in the safest way possible and sometimes that involves actually exploding it.”
He said the discovery of old explosive was not a common occurrence for local police.
“Not around here, but in the country it is not uncommon to come across old explosives or blasting caps or detonators or things like that. Sometimes they are located on farms and occasionally something like this comes up.”