http://yourerie.com/content/fulltext/?cid=45981
Bomb Scare Follow Up
Reported by: Sky Yaple
Thursday, Feb 5, 2009 @05:25pm EST
Residents at the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Erie had quite a scare last night.
Tonight we're learning much more about what happened at the home, and whether residents were in any danger.
It was definitely not a bomb. In fact, it was four cannonballs from the Civil War.
They’d sat in the home's main lobby for as long as anyone can remember. But these four cannonballs did not have holes drilled in them, and there was no way to know if they were live.
So when a volunteer saw a warning label with the word "beware" on it -- administrators called in the bomb squad.
The bomb squad removed the cannonballs from the building with robots. Then the robots put them in a bombproof truck. Eventually they drove the cannonballs to Erie Sand and Gravel on the bayfront, where they surrounded them with dynamite and blew them up.
The staff at the home says they've moved the cannonballs many times before and never had a problem. But they say when dealing with people's lives you can never be too careful.
Commandant Nancy Stevenson says, "I had a maintenance guy approach me and say I’ve personally handled those. So maybe we went above and beyond but better that than to have been potentially sorry later. We’ll never know for sure. But we really highly doubt that there was any real danger. But again we wanted to be on the safe side when we're dealing with lives, so we took all the cares and cautions that we needed to."
Because of the way police destroyed the cannonballs there's no way to know if they were live or not. Six people who live above the cannonballs had to be moved until they were out of the building.
Bomb Scare Follow Up
Reported by: Sky Yaple
Thursday, Feb 5, 2009 @05:25pm EST
Residents at the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Erie had quite a scare last night.
Tonight we're learning much more about what happened at the home, and whether residents were in any danger.
It was definitely not a bomb. In fact, it was four cannonballs from the Civil War.
They’d sat in the home's main lobby for as long as anyone can remember. But these four cannonballs did not have holes drilled in them, and there was no way to know if they were live.
So when a volunteer saw a warning label with the word "beware" on it -- administrators called in the bomb squad.
The bomb squad removed the cannonballs from the building with robots. Then the robots put them in a bombproof truck. Eventually they drove the cannonballs to Erie Sand and Gravel on the bayfront, where they surrounded them with dynamite and blew them up.
The staff at the home says they've moved the cannonballs many times before and never had a problem. But they say when dealing with people's lives you can never be too careful.
Commandant Nancy Stevenson says, "I had a maintenance guy approach me and say I’ve personally handled those. So maybe we went above and beyond but better that than to have been potentially sorry later. We’ll never know for sure. But we really highly doubt that there was any real danger. But again we wanted to be on the safe side when we're dealing with lives, so we took all the cares and cautions that we needed to."
Because of the way police destroyed the cannonballs there's no way to know if they were live or not. Six people who live above the cannonballs had to be moved until they were out of the building.
