[1]This might look a little bit like an ugly fishing lure, but it’s almost two feet long. / Courtesy photo by Pe Ell Marshals Office
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The Washington State Patrol Bomb Squad was called to Pe Ell yesterday evening after a large military mortar was found under a chicken coop.
“The homeowner was putting in a fence, dug in close to the chicken coop and noticed something hard and tapped it a couple times,” Pe Ell Marshal Mike Hartnett said.
It turns out the nearly two-foot-long object was live, he said.
“It’s firing mechanism was intact and its safety pin was gone,” Hartnett said. “One abrupt bump on the nose of that, could have set it off.”
The marshal said he understood it would have a “kill radius” of up to 50 meters.
One meter is a little longer than three feet.
Hartnett said two of his deputy marshals were on duty, and they evacuated a couple residents and blocked off the area. It was in the backyard of a residence on East Pe Ell Avenue, near the edge of the city limits, he said.
It was about 5:45 p.m. and the bomb squad came out and ended up putting it in their bomb trailer and hauling it back to Shelton to dispose of it, he said.
Hartnett said he was told it was an 82 mm mortar.
“Probably an old Vietnam-era mortar, is our best guess,” he said.
How it got a backyard in Pe Ell, they don’t know. It’s an older home, that’s had a few owners, he said.
“Either somebody brought home a souvenir, even off a military firing range and thought it was a dud,” he said. “Maybe someone didn’t want it anymore and poked it under the chicken coop.”