Bomb-hauling truck wrecks

Police called for an Army unit Thursday at an Interstate 20 weigh station near Grovetown to help move bombs from a wrecked flatbed truck, officials said.

• Photos

Back | Next

Back | Next

At about 8 a.m. Thursday, authorities called the 184th Ordnance Battalion at Fort Gillem, Ga., outside Atlanta, for help, post spokesman Ron Morton said. Members of Fort Gillem's 723rd Ordnance Company were dispatched soon after to assist, he said.

Crews brought in a crane to move the truck's payload - 16 2,000-pound Mark 84 bombs. The bombs were not damaged and were not armed with fuses, Mr. Morton said.

Military officials assured police there was no danger of the bombs exploding, Columbia County sheriff's Capt. Steve Morris said.

Workers transferred a metal container holding the bombs to a different truck and took it away at about 4:30 p.m., Capt. Morris said.

He said the truck had left the manufacturer in Oklahoma and was headed to Wilmington, N.C. He did not know the name of the company that made the ordnance.

Glenda Smith, the driver of the truck for R&R Trucking, of Missouri, said she was exiting the off-ramp of the eastbound weigh station about 3:30 a.m. Thursday when she inadvertently veered off the road. She said her truck struck a guardrail, which gave way, and her truck went down a small embankment into a ditch.

As of Thursday afternoon, Capt. Morris said he was unsure whether any charges would be filed against Ms. Smith.

Once the bombs were transferred, Capt. Morris said he expected it would take a wrecker crew about an hour to remove the wrecked truck from the weigh station ditch. Traffic flow on the interstate was unimpeded, he said.

Authorities said ordnance cargo on I-20 is not unusual.

"The majority of the transports (on I-20) are petroleum products, but there are many transports with hazardous materials and some radiological and explosive materials as well,'' Columbia County Emergency Services Director Pam Tucker said in an e-mail.

Reach Donnie Fetter at (706) 868-1222, ext. 113, or donnie.fetter@augustachronicle.com.