Best of Intentions Stir a Ruckus With Live Artillery Shell

A woman thought that she was doing the right thing when she went to a fire station in North Hollywood on Thursday to drop off an unspent World War I artillery shell she found while cleaning out her father’s basement.

Instead, firefighters evacuated the station and closed off two streets for an hour while Los Angeles police bomb squad technicians came to take the 75-millimeter shell away.

“She dropped it off on our front lawn and we don’t have any good way of handling it other than to have the bomb squad come out,” said Los Angeles Fire Capt. Al Hernandez. Hernandez was on duty at Fire Station 60 in North Hollywood when the woman, in her late 50s, stopped by Thursday afternoon.

The woman’s name was not released.

Hernandez said the brass and steel shell had a live warhead and could have exploded if it had been dropped on its detonator. The shell, weighing two to three pounds, was about 11 inches long and three inches in diameter, he said.

The shell apparently belonged to the woman’s recently deceased father, who kept it as a war souvenir and stored it in the basement of his home on Kling Street, Hernandez said. He said the woman should have left the shell in place and called police to inspect it.

“Driving around in a car is not a good way to transport it,” Hernandez said.