World War II-era bombs found near Fairfield

Explosives experts are called in after construction worker unearths munitions at old shipyard site; Harbor tunnel, I-895 reopened this morning

By Tom Pelton
Sun Staff

May 6, 2004, 9:50 AM EDT

Baltimore's Harbor Tunnel Thruway and the water entrance to the Inner Harbor were closed last night and access to a wide area around Fairfield restricted as Army and police explosives experts examined large World War II-era munitions discovered near an old shipyard site.

With no certainty of the danger posed by 11 bombs and apparent triggering devices, authorities took the precaution of temporarily closing the 13-mile Interstate 895 highway, including the toll tunnel and an area above and around the site.

By this morning, all but one of the old bombs had been taken to Aberdeen Proving Ground, and the tunnel and highway were reopened around 5:45 a.m. Maryland Transportation Authority Police Chief Gary McLhinney said authorities were waiting for the Army to remove the last bomb before shifting into the investigative stage.

The FBI was on the scene, McLhinney said.

An Army bomb disposal crew used a special device to determine that the remaining bomb did not contain explosives and could be safely moved, officials said. Authorities expected the last bomb to be transported to the Aberdeen Proving Ground later in the day.

Asked whether all ordnance had been uncovered, Army Col. Tim Madere, commander of Aberdeen Proving Ground's Guardian Brigade, said he could not be sure.

"You're never positive," he said. "That is an uncertainty when you don't have all of the history of a site."

The initial restrictions were expected to keep the few businesses in the area from opening today -- largely on Childs Street -- and the Toyota import automobile storage facility. Marine and air traffic were also temporarily restricted in the area.

"It's significant," Lt. Andrew Ely, a Coast Guard spokesman, said early today, outlining the affected area. He said the Patapsco River above the Harbor Tunnel -- from Fairfield to Lazaretto Point -- was part of the zone where vessels had been prohibited.

Only two commercial vessels were being affected immediately -- one yesterday that could not get to its destination at Lehigh Cement, and an auto carrier that is to be diverted today to dock at an alternate berth, the Maryland Port Administration and Coast Guard said.

Early yesterday, a construction worker in the remote southern Baltimore area started his day by throttling up a backhoe to clear scrap metal from the old shipyard.

Using a claw-like device, he clutched and raised what looked like a pipe. But as the dirt tumbled away, he could tell it was something unusual.

The man hopped down to take a closer look and discovered it was a bomb, according to Darlene Frank, director of communications for the Maryland Port Administration, which hired the worker.

Four more bombs

Within a short time, four more bombs -- weighing as much as 4,000 pounds each -- had been found in the shipyard, and officials from the U.S. Department of Defense were investigating and clearing people out of a 2,000-meter potential blast zone around the area -- a radius of more than a mile.

"I don't know if he was frightened, but he was definitely surprised," Frank said of the worker. "It was not the way he wanted to start his Wednesday morning."

None of the bombs detonated. Officials said yesterday that they were trying to determine whether the ordnance might have come from the 1946-built aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea or other military ships scrapped over the decades along the industrial Fairfield waterfront.

"That's the supposition right now, that they were on the USS Coral Sea, the aircraft carrier that was taken apart here," Madere said this morning.

Bomb defused

The first bomb unearthed -- which resembled those dropped from airplanes -- had been defused before the workers with Potts & Callahan Contracting Co. discovered it, said Cpl. Greg Prioleau, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police.

By late last night, several other devices had been found -- some described as "suspensors" used to set off munitions. Prioleau said they could weigh 400 to 4,000 pounds, but the unknown factor was whether they contained explosives.

"The military is here to determine if the remaining ordnance is live, and if there are any other buried ordnance in the area," said Prioleau, who talked to reporters outside the gates to the Maryland Port Administration property.

"All agencies involved are working quickly and safely to minimize the impact on the general public," Madere said in statement last night.

The worker who made the initial discovery refused to speak to the media, and officials would not release his name yesterday.

No homes were evacuated; no one lives nearby. The junk-filled former shipyard is next to a huge lot where thousands of Toyota vans are parked after being unloaded from cargo ships.

Foreclosure sale

The Maryland Port Administration bought the 10 acres of waterfront property, in the 3000 block of Childs St., for $885,000 at foreclosure Nov. 3, 2000, from a ship-scrapping company, Kurt Iron & Metal Co., according to state records.

The state is working to clear the site, cover the polluted ground with 3 feet of dirt and then blacktop it so that it can be marketed to an industrial tenant. It is viewed as potentially "hot property" because of its waterfront location, Frank said.

Sign on a fence

But a sign on the barbed-wire-topped fence warns of the challenges to building on the site: "Contaminants of concern at the site include heavy metals, PCB's and petroleum-related compounds."

State officials had planned to deal with pollution, not explosive devices. Although several Navy ships had been scrapped at the site since World War II, the state believed the military had been removing all of the bombs before turning the ships over to the salvage companies, state officials said.

"This is a surprise," said Frank of the discovery of the bombs. "But given the history of the site, I guess it is to be expected."

Liberty Ships

Land just east of the site was used by the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, Inc. during World War II to build 384 lightly armed cargo vessels called Liberty Ships.

Bethlehem Steel later sold the shipyard to Patapsco Scrap Corp., which worked until 1984 dismantling battleships and other Navy vessels, Keith said.

Just to the west, on the former Kurt Iron & Metal site -- where the bombs were found -- scrap companies until the late 1990s ripped apart and sold parts of decommissioned military vessels, including the 972-foot-long Coral Sea.

Environmental woes

The problems of the industry were described in a 1997 series in The Sun called "The Shipbreakers." The demolition of the old military ships at the site, by Seawitch Salvage Inc. and others, led to serious environmental problems, including several fires, pollution pouring into the harbor and workers mishandling asbestos.

The owner of Seawitch Salvage, Kerry L. Ellis, was convicted in May 1997 of federal safety and environmental violations. Maryland Transportation Authority Police today said they plan to open a criminal investigation into whether the bombs are linked to that case.

"We'll start this investigation from scratch, recognizing what happened previously," McLhinney said.

Said Deidre McCabe, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Port Administration: "The USS Coral Sea was dismantled by Seawitch Salvage at this site, before the work was shut down because of environmental problems.

"But several other salvage companies also worked there," McCabe said, including Don Jon Inc. None of them told the state they were handling explosives.

"The U.S. Navy was overseeing the dismantling of this ship throughout the entire process," McCabe said. "The MPA didn't get involved until afterward, in 2000. The MPA had nothing to do with the shipbreaking."

Explosives experts from the U.S. Army's Fort McNair in Washington will test the bombs to see whether they are active, then they will remove and destroy or dismantle them, Prioleau said.

Unlikely, author says

Robert Keith, author of Baltimore Harbor: a Picture History, said he found it unlikely that the bombs would have come from the construction from 1941 to 1945 of the Liberty Ships because these vessels did not carry aerial bombs.

It is more likely that the bombs came from the Coral Sea, because it was an aircraft carrier, or from one of several military ships dismantled nearby, Keith said.

"This is a major site because of the Liberty Ships -- but these bombs probably had nothing to do with the Liberty Ships," he said.

This article was updated by baltimoresun.com staff with information from the Associated Press. Sun staff writers Lynn Anderson and Richard Irwin also contributed. Copyright © 2004,