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New Area In Orange County Could Be Hiding Buried WWII Bombs

Posted: 5:48 pm EST February 29, 2008

One neighborhood's nightmare just became worse. There's a new area that could be in danger from some buried WWII bombs.

Channel 9's been on top of the story since first finding out about the possibility of buried munitions underneath and around Odyssey Middle School. This time, a nearby county landfill and its 320-acre expansion could contain old military bombs.

Landfill workers will be receiving some special safety training. Many are already trained to spot bombs, but it's too late for a 320-acre area that was already cleared. Workers had no idea they were bulldozing a bombing target.

Friday, Eyewitness News toured a giant football field ready to be topped with garbage, but it's what might be underground that has engineers concerned.

"We're gonna do a survey, magnetic survey," explained landfill engineer Jim Flynt. "So we'll be checking the whole site for anomalies and depending on what we find then we'll do excavations."

The newest maps of bomb targets show two newly reported targets two miles from Odyssey Middle School, right in the middle of the landfill's new expansion area and causing concern among those who work there. They're even considering specially armored vehicles when it's time to bring in the garbage.

But with all those safety precautions, it's not like anyone is in immediate danger. The real danger was four years ago, when the forest was cleared.

"It was real recent information. So we talked about how before we were dumb and happy. Just got lucky, I guess," Flynt said.

They were very lucky, in fact, considering that when they were clearing trees they were also digging up gopher tortoises, more than 100 of them.

The first hint that something was very wrong out near Odyssey Middle School was last July, when a property owner next door discovered the practice bombs. In the last seven months, crews with the Army Corps of Engineers have painstakingly surveyed and cleared the land around the school.

By Valentine's Day, crews cleared the nearby Tivoli Gardens subdivision. Crews began their search of the Warwick subdivision last Monday.

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