Vietnam War Bomb From Infamous Accident Found by Construction Crew

A construction crew in California might have just discovered a piece of Vietnam War history right here at home. 

According to CBS News, workers found what appeared to be an undetonated bomb near the Roseville Railyards outside Sacramento. It was uncovered near where a munitions train carrying bombs meant for the Vietnam War caught fire and exploded back in 1973, sending bombs and explosive material all over the area. 

“According to the official report, they can’t say what happened for sure, but they think one of the wheels of the boxcar overheated and set the train on fire and set some of the bombs off, and it was a chain reaction,” Citrus Heights Historical Society president Larry Fritz recounted to CBS News.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department has yet to confirm its origins, but Fritz sent a photo of the bomb to his friend who worked on the clean-up after the 1973 disaster. “He confirmed it. He said, ‘Yeah, that’s one of the bombs,'” Fritz noted.

Thankfully, no one was killed in the explosions, which lasted about a day and a half. “We just sat there and watched the bombs go off at night and just, you know, about every four or five minutes you’d see a big orange fireball going off,” Fritz, who had just turned 18 at the time, told KCRA. 

“There was, I believe, about 1,200 of them that went off,” he remembered. “A lot of them were just thrown free and without exploding. So I’m sure they cleaned up as many as they could. But, you know, there were so many of they didn’t catch them all.” He pointed out that the newly discovered bomb was “right near the epicenter,” and its location can say a lot about its origin. “I can’t think of any other reason why it would be there. And so, I’m pretty certain that’s from the 1973 explosion,” he said. 

Local authorities haven’t yet confirmed the bomb’s connection to the Roseville Railyards explosion, but they also believe it could be a remnant of the destructive event. 

“I’d never say never. Our bomb squad guys haven’t said that just yet, but obviously they’ll get into that,” Amar Ghandi of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office told KCRA. “It’s crazy, right? 51 years later, things like this could still potentially be popping up because again, as we keep growing, more houses are going to develop, more construction is going to be happening. So hopefully this is the last. But it wouldn’t surprise any of us if more turn up.”