Police – Dangerous jetsam

One evening last week the peaceful evening tranquility of Snells Beach was shattered by a window-rattling explosion. No, this time it wasn’t a Hollywood blockbuster being filmed on one of the many beautiful beaches on the Mahurangi Peninsula. Allow me to explain …

Late in the afternoon that day, the receding tide at Algies Bay left behind a dangerous visitor in the form of an undetonated military flare packed with white phosphorous. Dropped into the open ocean as part of military exercises, normally these flares burn with incredible intensity and are gone. Very occasionally, however, one fails to fire, survives being dropped into the sea, and floats ashore. It is very unusual for one to make it all the way into Kawau Bay and onto the beach at Algies Bay, but somehow this one did just that.

The issue, then, is the volatile phosphorous contents of the flare. White phosphorous is very unstable and can just start to burn when exposed to oxygen at temperatures as low as 10-15 degrees Celsius.

What’s more, once it starts burning, it can attain a temperature above 800 degrees Celsius. The long and the short of it is that anyone who picks up one of these unexploded flares and moves it around risks it exploding into intense heat in their hands. Even if it doesn’t begin to burn, the highly toxic white phosphorous is easily absorbed through human skin and, once in your system, can cause damage to internal organs like the kidneys, liver and heart.

Fortunately, in this case, builders working on a waterfront property found it and called police immediately. They did the right thing.

I’d ask everyone to take a look at the photo below, and if you see something like this on the beach, steer well clear and call the police as soon as possible. Parents, take a moment to show your children the photo and equip them with the information around just how potentially dangerous these items can be.

Children can be a bit like magpies and will be naturally drawn to something as shiny and interesting-looking as these flares.

In point of fact, these flares are so dangerous that the one that showed up on Algies Bay was cordoned off by police until an explosive ordinance disposal expert from the Department of Defence showed up to deal with it. Even he wasn’t prepared to take it far for disposal. The flare was moved a very short distance by a trained expert in a purpose-built canister to a vacant bit of open ground nearby and detonated.

And that’s the story behind that colossal ‘bang’ at Snells/Algies last week, for those of you who were wondering.