Emergency personnel respond Thursday afternoon after an unexploded ordnance was found at the Telus Data Centre construction site.
(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)
August 26, 2013 - 12:11 PM
KAMLOOPS – Proper procedures were followed and no one was ever at risk a Telus spokesperson says following the discovery of an unexploded ordnance at construction site for the new data centre at the corner of McGill Road and Bunker Road late last week.
The ordnance, left over from World War II when the site was used for storage, was found Thursday afternoon and excavation crews immediately evacuated the site and called in authorities.
“Everything worked the way it should have,” Shawn Hall says. “They weren't sure at that point what it was.... It's better safe than sorry.”
The military attended the site Friday morning to detonate the ordnance and later that afternoon crews were back on site.
There has been significant excavation at the 11.5 acre site, Hall says, and crews are undertaking a rescan of the area to ensure there are not any more explosive devices laying around.
“This one was clearly missed,” Hall says of the scan that took place before construction began. “We are rescanning more areas now.”
The new $75 million data centre is still expected to open later this year though there have been minor construction delays.
“We ran into more hard rock than anticipated, that slowed us down a little bit,” Hall says. “It's moving ahead nicely now.”
Earlier this month crews scanned Kalamalka Lake for a reported mortar at the bottom of the lake near Cosens Bay. The ordnance was eventually found and removed before being destroyed offsite.
To contact a reporter for this story, email jstahn@infotelnews.ca, call (250)819-3723 or tweet @JennStahn.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013