Quang Tri Province (26 March 2020) — “Our family is really appreciative of the team’s quick response that allows us to continue the construction work without interruptions,” said Mr. Dinh Ngoc Tho after an unexploded mortar was safely removed from his home in Hai Le Commune of Quang Tri Township.
Last Thursday morning 19 March 2020, while his children and local workers were digging to remove a tree to get more space so that they could repair the family’s kitchen, they unexpectedly exposed a wartime munition. The location was adjacent to their existing kitchen.
The alert father asked his sons to suspend their work and called to the provincial hotline number. They didn’t have to wait too long. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team of RENEW-NPA arrived at their home one hour later.
According to the EOD Team Leader Hoang Kim Chien, the team found a 60mm mortar round which he had identified a safe-to-remove item.
In 2020 so far, EOD teams of RENEW-NPA have conducted 161 EOD tasks in response to people’s calls to report discoveries of explosive ordnance, resulting in 231 munitions being removed and destroyed.
The Survey & Clearance Program of Project RENEW – Norwegian People’s Aid is funded by the U.S. Department of State and the UK Department for International Development.
Project RENEW was established in 2001 as a joint effort between the government of Quang Tri Province and interested INGOs to “restore the environment and neutralize the effects of the war” – with the main focus on unexploded ordinance.
Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) is one of the leading organizations worldwide in humanitarian disarmament. NPA has worked in Vietnam since 2008 following the signing of an MOU with the government of Quang Tri People’s Committee to support the development of Project RENEW’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) capacity. NPA’s operational footprint now covers all of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue Provinces, with an increase of assets to four Battle Area Clearance teams, one Non-Technical Survey team, four EOD teams, and 25 Technical Survey teams.
