Project Phongsali 2011: The photos tell it all. Company builds road without first clearing bombs!

Week Four

Day Twenty-Four

It’s become clear to me why so many villages are littered with old bomb casings that still contain fuses, boosters and other dangerous components. The construction company that is rebuilding the road that runs through the southern districts of this province is working on uncleared land and is, as one would expect, finding ordnance.

At the company’s office we inspected photographs posted on a bulletin board that document many of the finds. Their excavators, bulldozers, and other large machines have uncovered many general-purpose bombs in the 500 and 750 pound range as well as rockets, mortars and cluster bomblets.

It’s not surprising that a company building a road through uncleared land would find ordnance. It’s remarkable that, given the amount of ordnance thus far uncovered and disturbed, that no worker has yet been killed.

A project manager told me that the company’s plan is to work without clearing UXO ahead of their machines. But… if [when] they find ordnance they will call upon the Lao military to come to the site and render the ordnance safe.

Two facts discredit the construction company’s claim that the military is doing “rapid response.” First, photographs on public display at the company’s office show power shovels and other machines scooping bombs out of the ground and forcefully moving them about.

In addition, I’ve conducted interviews with workers who operate those machines. They told me that no one “responds” to the ordnance that they find. Several heavy equipment operators told me that they personally uncovered large bombs and that villagers then carted away.  The men all said that they knew their lives were at risk, but that as a “small person” in need of a job, they had to do the assigned work and simply hope for the best.

One worker told me he had already uncovered four large bombs.  I said, “I know that none of those bombs exploded because you are still alive to tell me the story.”

The man replied, “Once, a small bomb, a bombie, did explode but I was in my cab and was not injured”.