Expert to Search Rail Yard for More Vietnam-Era Bombs

The owner of a railroad yard where Army experts detonated a Vietnam War-era bomb Wednesday plans to hire a geophysicist to survey the area for more bombs.

Several hours after a team of Army and local explosives experts disposed of the 250-pound bomb found Tuesday, Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley said construction in the area is being halted until the tests for more bombs are complete.

Bromley said Union Pacific would bring a contractor today to the site where crews that had been rehabilitating old track found the bomb. He said the geophysical survey would include ground-penetrating radar and conductivity and magnetic tests.

After about 400 people were evacuated from their homes, demolition experts used plastic explosives to detonate the torpedo-shaped, three-foot-long metal bomb found buried in an area where a trainload of wartime bombs had exploded 24 years ago.

The concussion from the blast could be felt for miles and shrapnel from the bomb went flying, but there was no damage.

Many of the people evacuated within half a mile of the blast stayed at an emergency center set up at a nearby high school.

The bomb was uncovered Tuesday afternoon in an area between two parallel sets of tracks. A sheriff’s spokesman said it was one of several hundred bombs that exploded or went missing in 1973 when a trainload of explosives en route to U.S. troops in Vietnam blew up while passing through the rail yard.