How Could Anyone Be So Stupid?

[fjruple]

While in the US Army in my early years I taught demolitions for the Engineers and we had quite a few folks that could put together any type of explosives for demolition work. The most dangerous I thought was black powder. Static electricity or small spark could set the stuff off when not properly stored. When wet the black powder is useless but when dried out the stuff can be as dangerous as the day as it was made. While being stationed at Ft. Belvoir, VA, then the location of the US Army Engineer School, there was an off post incident where a home was leveled from an explosion. At the time the PLA and other terrorist groups were conducting bombings. The local PD asked us to take a look to see what our opinion was as to the cause of the explosion. Initially the PD thought it was a natural gas explosion but the home had electric heating. We interviewed the home owner who was not home at the time of the explosion as well as his family thankfully. The explosion appeared to have originated in the fireplace of the home owner. The home owner told us that he had the fireplace going and that he and his family put out the fire and left to visit relatives in the area and came home to a police barraged street with their home gone!! In the remains of the home we found a 15 inch Rodman shot, at first I thought it was a 10 inch Rodman shot. I inquired to the home owner if there were any other shells in the fireplace, He said he had purchased two found a local scrap yard and it took three individuals to move them. They weighted about 400 lbs each!! (Powder filled shell only weights 352 lbs) He thought they would be neat to keep the burning logs in his fireplace. Well you guessed it one of the 15inch Rodman shells was not a solid shot but a black powder filled shell. With the continuous heating of the shell the black powder dried out and the heat from the burning logs set it off. We determined that the 15 inch Rodman shells had come from Battery Rodgers which was located in Alexandria VA during the American Civil War or as my Southern comrades would say the War of Northern Aggression. The shells were probably thought to be all solid shot and probably scrapped that way until the local home owner found something neat at the local scrap yard.

--fjruple