Quang Tri Town, Quang Tri Province (11 October 2018) — Hundreds of Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) were safely removed from a construction site in Quang Tri Town on Thursday by one of our Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams.
The quick response was to follow up an emergency call on Wednesday from local workers in Quang Tri Town. They reported that their excavator operator had suddenly unearthed a cache of UXO at a construction site adjacent to the Thach Han River.
Under direction of Team Leader Hoang Kim Chien, the members of the EOD Team No. 3 finished investigation on Thursday morning, safely removing 590 pieces of UXO, including projectiles, mortars, and rockets, from a depth of two meters.
The team has transported all these munitions to the central demolition site in Trieu Phong District for safe destruction. Local workers now resume their activities after having to suspend for nearly two days.
In the summer of 1972, Quang Tri Town was totally devastated in the Easter Offensive, a military campaign conducted by People’s Army of Vietnam against the Army of Republic of Vietnam and U.S. military. NPA-Project RENEW EOD teams so far in 2018 have conducted 85 tasks in response to UXO callouts from local residents of Quang Tri Town.
Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) Survey & Clearance Program implemented at Project RENEW (Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing the Effects of the War) is funded by the U.S. Department of State and the UK Department for International Development and a cooperation project between NPA and Quang Tri Province Department of Foreign Affairs.
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.
