The Globe and Mail, Friday, April 20, 2001
bullet 'One in three shells didn't explode' 
bullet In the Belgian army bomb-disposal unit, the First World War and its leftovers are daily realities
bullet By Alan Freeman
bullet POPERINGE, BELGIUM -- Just last month, farmer Noel St-Germain spotted several rusty mortar shells on a muddy field outside this town in southern Belgium. He called the police, which got in touch with the Belgian army's bomb-disposal unit.
bullet By the time the bomb squad had dug a couple of metres into the Flanders field, it had uncovered a storage site containing no fewer than 1,100 eight-centimetre British shells, originally destined for the front lines but sitting undisturbed since the end of the First World War -- more than eight decades ago.
bullet "Every year, we find at least one storage site like this," said Captain Luc Moerman, a company commander for DOVO, the Belgian army's Service for the Disposal and Destruction of Explosive Devices.
bullet In Canada, the 1914-18 war is the stuff of history books and annual Remembrance Day ceremonies, but in the former battlefields of Belgium and northern France, the war remains a daily reality and an occasional danger.
bullet Squads of DOVO's 150 bomb-disposal experts regularly fan out through the Belgian countryside, answering some of the 3,000 calls the service receives annually to pick up unexploded grenades, mortar shells and other ordnance -- the vast majority from the First World War.
bullet Estimates are that no fewer than 1.5 billion projectiles were shipped to the front lines during the war. But millions were not fired, and millions more failed to blow up because of shoddy production techniques.
bullet "We know one in three shells didn't explode," Capt. Moerman said. DOVO collected 300 tonnes of unexploded ordnance last year.
bullet Shells still occasionally explode, killing or injuring those who handle them. Sometimes these people are curious civilians, but professionals are also at risk. Two French disposal experts were killed at Vimy in 1998 when a shell exploded, and four Belgian experts died in an explosion in 1986.
bullet Last weekend, across the border in France, 12,000 people were evacuated over a three-kilometre zone around the town of Vimy after officials determined that a stockpile of shells could explode and spread toxic gas fumes. Residents will likely not be allowed back in their homes until this weekend.
bullet The Vimy site contained 173 tonnes of munitions -- 16,000 projectiles, most of them filled with phosgene and mustard gas, much-feared poison gases that attack eyes, skin and lungs, causing irritation, blistering and even death.
bullet Disposal is relatively simple with standard ordnance, such as the shells in Mr. St-Germain's field. They were transported to DOVO's base at Poelkapelle to be destroyed in a controlled explosion.
bullet Disposal is more difficult with gas shells and their deadly fumes. They used to be encased in concrete and dumped at sea, but that practice is now illegal under terms of an international convention on chemical warfare. Belgium stopped ocean dumping in 1980.
bullet Belgian officials say they are years ahead of the French in dealing with this unwanted legacy of war, particularly when it comes to gas shells. At Poelkapelle (just a couple of kilometres from St. Julien, where 2,000 Canadians died in a German gas attack in April, 1915), Belgium has opened a $25-million disposal facility that can deal with most kinds of gas shells. There is nothing of its kind in France.
bullet According to Capt. Moerman, about 90 per cent of incoming shells are easily identified as non-toxic and sent to special outdoor storage areas where they are placed in crates to await controlled destruction. Determining which of the remainder are gas shells can be tricky.
bullet Suspect shells are thoroughly cleaned of rust and X-rayed for liquid content, an indication they are capable of producing toxic gas.
bullet In the next sensitive step, a robotic drill makes a hole in the shell at a spot above the liquid and below the explosive in the tip.
bullet "We don't want to drill into the explosive because we risk an explosion, and we don't want to drill into the toxic material because we risk contaminating the installation," Capt. Moerman said.
bullet A small quantity of the liquid is extracted through the hole and a lab determines its exact chemical makeup.
bullet Robotic equipment then lops off the top of the shell and the contents are poured into one of three separate barrels, depending on the chemical composition.
bullet The barrels are sent to a licensed facility, where the chemicals are burned and destroyed at high temperatures.
bullet The process is incredibly time-consuming.
bullet In its two years of operation, the facility has only disposed of 1,000 toxic items. About 25,000 suspect shells are stored at the site.
bullet Capt. Moerman said the facility had typical startup problems but now works more efficiently.
bullet The goal is to process the backlog within the next five years, he said, freeing the facility to handle shells as they are brought in.
bullet Considering that the volume of annual collections has remained stable for 22 years, Capt. Moerman doesn't worry about running out of work.
bullet "We will probably be at this for at least another 22 years. I'll be on my pension by the time we begin to resolve this problem," the 33-year-old officer said.

The Globe and Mail, Monday, April 16, 2001 Unearthing Vimy's underground