CROSSVILLE, Tenn. — A Crossville man made an explosive discovery Tuesday evening while cleaning out his mom and dad's barn: a WWII-era bazooka rocket.
The man was in the barn in a neighborhood off Vaughn Street when he made the discovery. Rightfully concerned after discovering an explosive lying around, he flagged police down. A fire team and Crossville Fire Chief Chris South arrived initially to check it out and took pictures and sent to the Knox County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad for confirmation.
Indeed, they were dealing with an explosive. The KCSO squad said it appeared to be unexploded military ordinance, so it contacted the U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal Battalion at Fort Campbell.
EOD teams and an FBI Knoxville bomb technician arrived to inspect and dispose of the explosive. Because the explosive was found in a residential area, crews determined they needed to set up a roughly 300-foot buffer zone just in case they needed to evacuate the area. That zone included 3 streets in the area and roughly 15-20 residents and businesses.
People across Cumberland County would soon learn about the undetonated explosive through an emergency alert, but Chief South said that was sent to most by accident. South said authorities contacted Cumberland County Dispatch around 10:30 p.m. to utilize the 911 Hyper-Reach system to send a precautionary alert about the incident specifically to people within the immediate buffer zone, which was to inform them that a uniformed police/fire officer would potentially visit their home if a temporary evacuation was needed.
Something went wrong, though, and South said the alert was accidently sent out to the entirety of Cumberland County – creating some confusion. South said they worked to clear up the confusion immediately and are working with dispatch to ensure something like that doesn’t happen again.
South said the Ft. Campbell EOD team determined they were dealing with a live training round after inspecting it, so teams rendered the explosive safe for transport and took it to a remote area in an undeveloped industrial area off Bradshaw Lane in Westel where teams safely detonated it around 1 a.m. Wednesday.