Observers winced as workers gave the signal on Thursday to detonate a pile of old mortar shells and unexploded munitions on this former US Navy bombing range that was once the focus of heated protest.
“Fire in the area!” came the shout as the first of four controlled blasts shook the ground, as the US Navy began its cleanup project in Vieques, a tiny island of 9,000 residents, ringed by beaches and turquoise waters east of mainland Puerto Rico.
The 1,200kg of weaponry destroyed on Thursday is a fiery reminder of the Naval Training Range, which was hammered for decades with live rounds from warships and planes, and is now scattered with piles of mangled metal.
The Navy finally agreed to close the range in April 2003, after years of protests against the danger and din of the practice bombing. But thousands of unexploded munitions were left behind, lurking under tropical foliage.
Now, contract workers are methodically clearing the site, overseen by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The effort, begun in 2005, could take 10 years, and the Navy has set aside US$200 million, officials said.
On Thursday, reporters were invited to watch the destruction.
Outrage over the range began in 1999, when a Marine jet dropped two bombs off target, killing a local security guard and drawing the ire of islanders.
The Navy closed the range four years later, handing it over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Islanders have since sought to make the area a tourist destination.
In the first two years of cleanup, some 2.1 million kilograms of scrap iron were recovered and melted down in large furnaces on the island, before being shipped to the US mainland as scrap metal, said Chris Brown, a subcontractor with the environmental services firm of PIKA International, Inc.
Still, just 314 hectares of the 5,800-hectare training range have been cleared, said Christopher Penny, head of the Vieques Restoration Program.
Two-thirds of the site remains closed to the public because it is still peppered with unexploded munitions.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS