John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 This was in the attic of todays inspection. Any of you vets know what it is? I should put this in the report right? What do I say? Click to Enlarge 49.69 KB
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 Was the house vacant? And forgotten? No, not vacant but the occupants were not there so I couldn't ask them.
Bill Kibbel Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Mortar round. I should put this in the report right? What do I say?"Do a pre-closing check to be sure the house ain't blow'd up".
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 I forgot to mention, it's about 18" or so in length. Thats a pretty big mortar round huh?
Bill Kibbel Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 I forgot to mention, it's about 18" or so in length. Thats a pretty big mortar round huh? Mortars are listed in calibers (the inside diameter of the tube that they fit into) and range from 60mm to 120mm (2.36" to 4.72"). I think self propelled mortars can be about twice as big.
hausdok Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hi, It's an M56 81mm mortar round and a damned good reason to call the local PD. People don't hide inert rounds in attics. ATF would be pretty interested in that. It might have been boiled out though - I don't see a safety wire present. Of course, it might be live without the safety wire, in which case if someone drops it and it hits the floor just right you'd have the time equivalent of what it takes to get about 15 meters from the tube before it's trigger is set and then she goes off on second impact. Call the police and report it. It's better to have folks pissed off at you and get it checked out and determined to be inert, than to let a homeowner haul a live souvenir around from place to place endangering anyone within a 20 meter radius. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike
Jim Katen Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hi, It's an M56 81mm mortar round and a damned good reason to call the local PD. People don't hide inert rounds in attics. ATF would be pretty interested in that. It might have been boiled out though - I don't see a safety wire present. Of course, it might be live without the safety wire, in which case if someone drops it and it hits the floor just right you'd have the time equivalent of what it takes to get about 15 meters from the tube before it's trigger is set and then she goes off on second impact. Call the police and report it. It's better to have folks pissed off at you and get it checked out and determined to be inert, than to let a homeowner haul a live souvenir around from place to place endangering anyone within a 20 meter radius. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike Impressive. I thought it was a marital aid. - Jim Katen, Oregon
gtblum Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 [utube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLBuA-AP6ww&feature=related" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="344">
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 I just called the police. They're on it
gtblum Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hey John, You've had a few posts in the past about advertising and utilizing different resources to increase your exposure. You may have hit the jackpot here! LOCAL HOME INSPECTOR FINDS MORTAR How close are you to DC ?
SWagar Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 John Dirks Your Anti-Terrorist Home Inspector
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hey John, You've had a few posts in the past about advertising and utilizing different resources to increase your exposure. You may have hit the jackpot here! LOCAL HOME INSPECTOR FINDS MORTAR How close are you to DC ? I thought about that. I'de rather not have the publicity. Things are starting to pick up for me. With a full time job under my belt as well as the HI bit, I don't wanna go crazy.
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 BTW, the police called the FD who called the miltary. I wonder if I'll ever know the conclusion. One of the agents told me the owner is retired miltary and currently in a nursing home.
SonOfSwamp Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hey John, You've had a few posts in the past about advertising and utilizing different resources to increase your exposure. You may have hit the jackpot here! LOCAL HOME INSPECTOR FINDS MORTAR How close are you to DC ? I thought about that. I'de rather not have the publicity. Things are starting to pick up for me. With a full time job under my belt as well as the HI bit, I don't wanna go crazy. Believe me when I tell you, a home inspector will not be showered with publicity unless he does something shockingly bad, like accidentally setting off a mortar round inside a house. At most, you'll get a 2-minute bit on one of the local TV stations, which all viewers will forget within minutes. Oh, and there's this: Hardly any reporter/producer/director would consider an old mortar round in an attic to be news. Every time I ever got on TV, the only uptick in customer contact was a few rustics calling me up and asking me if I could fetch dead animals from crawl spaces. WJ PS: My predecessor at my old paper offered this about fame: "At most," she said, "it's third-string-minor-league catcher fame."
John Dirks Jr Posted March 20, 2009 Author Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hey John, You've had a few posts in the past about advertising and utilizing different resources to increase your exposure. You may have hit the jackpot here! LOCAL HOME INSPECTOR FINDS MORTAR How close are you to DC ? I thought about that. I'de rather not have the publicity. Things are starting to pick up for me. With a full time job under my belt as well as the HI bit, I don't wanna go crazy. Believe me when I tell you, a home inspector will not be showered with publicity unless he does something shockingly bad, like accidentally setting off a mortar round inside a house. At most, you'll get a 2-minute bit on one of the local TV stations, which all viewers will forget within minutes. Oh, and there's this: Hardly any reporter/producer/director would consider an old mortar round in an attic to be news. Every time I ever got on TV, the only uptick in customer contact was a few rustics calling me up and asking me if I could fetch dead animals from crawl spaces. WJ PS: My predecessor at my old paper offered this about fame: "At most," she said, "it's third-string-minor-league catcher fame." I guess my intuition for passing on the publicity will serve me well then.
hausdok Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 I was thinking about this last night. It's probably a dud round that the moron found while in the field training and brought home with him. You'd be amazed at how commonplace they are. Every once in a while troops find them during training exercises on areas that used to be ranges on various military posts and then they're stupid enough to think they're safe and they'll stuff them in their ruck sack and try to sneak them home; sometimes they're successful. There're a couple of kids killed or injured every few years on or near military posts around the country where the kids find those or other dud ordnance and pick it up. We had a couple of reserve SF guys get injured by mustard gas at Ft. McClellan during training exercises when I was stationed there back in the 80's. They found an old canister half-buried, picked it up. It was too rusted and fragile and started leaking after it was disturbed. McClellan used to be the home of the chemical school and when they used to train with the stuff there back around WWII they'd bury partially used canisters on South Post after an exercise. The ground is so contaminated out there now that they drained and rerouted a big lake that used to be a family picnic area out there. It was a weird place to train - nice little concrete parking pads, barbecue grills and gazebos about every 50 ft. surrounding a big depression in the ground filled with nothing but saplings. By now those are probably 100ft. tall trees. There was lots of unexploded ordnance all over Iraq after Desert Storm and I'm sure there's more over there now. After Desert Storm, my company was tasked with customs screening of all troops redeploying back to Germany. US customs came in and put us through customs training and then we basically functioned as US customs inspectors out of country and would go through a unit's vehicles and equipment, weapons, and personal belongings as units staged for redeployment. After we screened them, they or their equipment was isolated in guarded compounds until they boarded planes or their equipment was loaded on ship. We confiscated mounds of the stuff from GI's rucks and where it had been concealed in units' vehicles and equipment. You wouldn't believe some of the crap those guys wanted to bring home. One Alabama State Trooper, who was over there with his reserve unit, was dumb enough to pick up a CBU sphere (baseball-sized cluster bomb unit munition). He looked it over, decided that it wasn't a suitable souvenir and then he tossed it on the ground, whereupon the "dud" blew up and took off both his legs. He bled out in less than 3 minutes, according to the guy that had been with him and was only wounded by a small piece of shrapnel from the ordnance. Depending on how old it is and whether it's still got comp in it and the type of fuse that thing is potentially very, very dangerous to touch. We sure know how to screw up this planet. Hope that it was boiled out and the fuse is gone. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike
Jeremy Posted March 20, 2009 Report Posted March 20, 2009 Hey John, You've had a few posts in the past about advertising and utilizing different resources to increase your exposure. You may have hit the jackpot here! LOCAL HOME INSPECTOR FINDS MORTAR How close are you to DC ? I thought about that. I'de rather not have the publicity. Things are starting to pick up for me. With a full time job under my belt as well as the HI bit, I don't wanna go crazy. Believe me when I tell you, a home inspector will not be showered with publicity unless he does something shockingly bad, like accidentally setting off a mortar round inside a house. At most, you'll get a 2-minute bit on one of the local TV stations, which all viewers will forget within minutes. Oh, and there's this: Hardly any reporter/producer/director would consider an old mortar round in an attic to be news. Every time I ever got on TV, the only uptick in customer contact was a few rustics calling me up and asking me if I could fetch dead animals from crawl spaces. WJ PS: My predecessor at my old paper offered this about fame: "At most," she said, "it's third-string-minor-league catcher fame." At least you were able to get dinner out of it.
John Dirks Jr Posted March 21, 2009 Author Report Posted March 21, 2009 Hehehe..., here's the follow up. Better safe than sorry. http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/n ... -Park.html
Bain Posted March 21, 2009 Report Posted March 21, 2009 Hehehe..., here's the follow up. Better safe than sorry. http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/n ... -Park.html That is awesome, John.
hausdok Posted March 21, 2009 Report Posted March 21, 2009 Hehehe is right, Nice piece of disinformation there. Flare casing indeed. It's a mortar round. it might be a M853A1 & M816 illumination cartridge, but those are always painted white. It's missing it's propellant wafers that usually wrap around the step above the fins - you remove them, depending on what minimum range you are arcing for; four wafers sends it at leat 850 meters, 3 sends it at least 700, 2 sends it at least 550 and 1 sends it at least 300 meters. Nonetheless, even an illumination round contains a fuse, ignition cartridge assembly and candle assembly (besides the chute); so, if it had been live it still could have hurt someone pretty badly if not handled properly. You did the right thing. I still don't understand why he hid it in the attic unless he stole it and didn't want anyone to know about it. OT - OF!!! M.
John Dirks Jr Posted March 21, 2009 Author Report Posted March 21, 2009 I had thought to myself, if it were a really dangerous thing, would they admit to it?
Bill Kibbel Posted March 22, 2009 Report Posted March 22, 2009 I was thinking the headline might be "Local Home Inspector Saves Entire Community". WJ is right again.
hausdok Posted March 22, 2009 Report Posted March 22, 2009 I had thought to myself, if it were a really dangerous thing, would they admit to it? Maybe not. In 1982 my MPI office at Ft. Devens, MA assisted the Ft. Devens CID office in an investigation of a 10th SF Group 18C (SF Engineer Sergeant) who was dealing dope. We eventually got enough evidence to get a warrant to search his place off-post and had to get the Shirley, MA P.D. involved. We suspected that his house might be booby trapped so we took him into the home with us when the warrant was executed. He stopped us just before we found his hiding place, 'cuz it was indeed booby trapped with C4. We brought in the local bomb squad who deferred to E.O.D. from on-base. E.O.D. came out, talked to the guy for two minutes and gave him the option of telling them how to de-rig it or they'd blow it in place, taking his house with it. He told them how to de-rig it, a tech went inside, de-rigged it, and they hauled off two blocks of C4 along wtih a bunch of marijuana and coke. His bust was mentioned but nothing was said about the boom-booms in the papers. He earned himself a 25-year jail sentence. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike
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