Mr Somphone, 37, is slowly building a concrete house in Nong Het to replace the draughty and dark wooden home that his family currently lives in. As is usual, he reinforced concrete pillars with long metal rods. A few months ago his five-year-old son, Lae, began collecting the excess pieces of rod to sell to their neighbour, a scrap dealer.
‘He sold two bags of rod pieces for about 20 thousand kip [US$ 2] and was very pleased. He bought some sweets and gave the rest of the money to his mother to save for him,’ says Mr Somphone.
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| Mr Somphone points to where his son found the UXO outside their house |
But then, during several days of continuous rain, Lae found a different kind of metallic object that he thought he could sell for scrap – a type of grenade containing white phosphorus. This weapon has an explosive bursting charge that is designed to spread the burning phosphorus over a large area, causing burning to whatever it comes in contact with, as well as emitting a toxic smoke. If it gets on the body it will continue to burn until removed or is no longer exposed to air.
Somehow the grenade had ended up in a drainage ditch just outside the family home, either washed down a hill by the rain or discarded by a wary local scrap dealer.
Lae knew from school that he should not touch unexploded ordnance (UXO), but thinking about buying more sweets, brought it round to the back of the house to add to his scrap collection. When the pile was big enough he was planning to take it next door to sell.
The rain continued for another two days. But when it stopped, the grenade started to smoke as the phosphorus was exposed to air. Before long, smoke was billowing from the back of the house, covering it completely. Mr Somphone returned home from work and thought his house was burning down.
On discovered with alarm that the cause was UXO, he quickly buried the grenade and contacted the MAG office in the village. David Davenport, MAG’s field manager in the area, was two hours away at the time. Fearing an imminent explosion, he immediately got in his car and headed for Nong Het.
‘It is a very high risk item and it was inevitable in that situation that it would have gone off,’ says David. When he arrived, he evacuated the area. By this time the grenade had started spitting burning phosphorus. He put it in a bucket of water to stablise it, then took it to a secure location and destroyed it.
‘What Mr Somphone had done would only have stopped the grenade from exploding for a short time. When it exploded, the family, building and anyone in the surrounding houses would have been injured and probably worse.’
MAG's work in Nong Het is
supported by DFID.
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