Tuesday, August 28, 2018

P800K worth of firecrackers destroyed in Ormoc City

ORMOC CITY, Leyte, Aug. 24 --For more than an hour on Thursday, the sand and gravel quarry zone of San Juan village here glowed like it was New Year’s Eve, as the police explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit “blasted” two truckloads of firecrackers and pyrotechnic devices worth PHP800,000 confiscated last December.
The disposal came after the police received an order from Municipal Trial Court in Cities Presiding Judge Rene Romero Jr., directing them to “transmit and deliver the confiscated illegal firecrackers and pyrotechnic devices” to the police regional civil security unit in Palo, Leyte.
However, for safety reasons, the local EOD preferred to dispose of the items in the city rather than transporting it to the regional police office, said Philippine National Police (PNP) regional EOD chief Senior Insp. Franklin Romeo Parangan.
“The pyrotechnics are dangerous for a long travel for it might explode on the way. And besides, the region has no storage area, that is why it was decided to crush it up here,” Parangan said.
When the crushed firecrackers and pyrotechnics were set on fire, the smoke produced reached about a hundred meters high and lasted more than an hour.
The city police has no storage designed for confiscated explosives. For several months, the pyrotechnics were laid at the open space and were exposed to rain and intense sunlight.
The police had earlier confiscated the boxes of firecrackers and pyrotechnic devices illegally sold in the market.
The EOD is an operation support group of the PNP mandated to conduct safe disposal of all bombs and neutralization of hazards from chemical, nuclear, and improvised explosive devices. (ERR/PNA)


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