Army called to Achill beach

Army called to Achill beach after mortar scare

Anton McNulty

A SUSPECTED explosive device which was found on the rocks along Dooagh beach on Achill Island on Saturday afternoon was rendered a harmless object by the Army Bomb Disposal Team, who carried out a controlled explosion on the device.
The suspicious device, which was initially thought to have been a mortar bomb, was found among the rocks by a local resident who was walking along the shoreline at 12.30pm on Saturday afternoon. He reported the device to the local Gardaí, who on advice from the Bomb Squad, closed off the beach and kept people at a safe distance.
The Army Bomb Disposal Team, who travelled from Athlone, arrived at the scene at 5.30pm and after examining the device identified it as a Marine pyrotechnic or flare. These are used by vessels at sea who set off them off when they are in distress.
Commandant Gavin Young, a press officer with the Irish Defence Forces, told The Mayo News that the Bomb Disposal Team were at the scene for approximately one-and-a-half hours and carried out a controlled explosion at 6.45pm.
Comdt Young confirmed the device was harmless, but said that these types of flares can be dangerous if they are still live and the person who called the Gardaí did the right thing. He said the flare was approximately the size of a two-litre coke bottle and, to an untrained eye, could easily have been mistaken for a mortar.
“There was no way of telling how long the flare has been in the sea or on the rocks so the safe thing to do was to carry out a controlled explosion. There was a potential danger with the device and the person who found it did the right thing by contacting the Gardaí,” he said.
While the flare has no explosives in it, they have in the past been used in bombs. During World War II a pyrotechnic flare was used on a number of vertical bombs as a means of tracking the bomb after it was released. The flare had a burning time of approximately one minute and gave off a white light.
This is not the first time unusual objects have landed on beaches around Achill, with cargo from shipwrecks in the Atlantic regularly washing up. During the 1920s and 1930s, a number of World War I sea mines were seen floating close to the Achill coast, with one even coming ashore on Keel beach. In the 1980s a haul of cocaine, worth close to a million pounds at the time, washed up on the rocks around Achill and the body of a sailor was also recovered.