Four US deminers injured in UXO blast (Cambodia)

Three articles here, in date order.

Four deminers injured in UXO blast
16 January 2013

Four American demining instructors were badly injured at a Kampong Chhnang training site yesterday when a piece of unexploded ordnance (UXO) went off as the group tried to dismantle it to use as a teaching aid.

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An American demining trainer is taken for emergency treatment after a UXO accident in Kampong Chhnang province, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013.

“They were checking a UXO and trying to... cut it in order to prepare it for teaching the students, when it exploded in the laboratory office.

“Of the four, two were seriously wounded and one very badly wounded,” Cambodian Mine Action Centre director-general Heng Ratana said.

Although Ratana did not have details of the injuries, he said three men had significant damage to their arms and faces.

All four men were rushed to hospitals in Phnom Penh.

The volunteer trainers, who arrived in Cambodia just days earlier, had hosted the month-long course for only a day when the accident occurred, Ratana said.

The men, all highly experienced, had been sent from Okinawa, in Japan, where they were employed as expert deminers.

In spite of significant demining efforts over the past decades, millions of unexploded ordnance remain buried throughout the country and scores of people are injured each year.

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While accidents declined slightly last year, dropping from 211 accidents in 2011 to 185 in 2012, deaths have remained steady, with 43 people killed in both years, according to data from the Cambodia Mine Victims Information System.

Ratana noted that the dangers remained no less prevalent for those with landmine knowledge.

“We’ve experienced this incident at other times as well with CMAC staff. We lost three operators in 2011, which was one of the [worst] experiences,” he said. '

'All people try to get away from UXO or landmines, but our teams, every day, seek them out. So even if they’re very experienced, that day may come.”

Injured US deminers remain in serious conditions
17 January 2013

A day after an explosion at a Kampong Chhnang demining training centre wounded four American trainers, three remained in serious condition after being flown to a Thai hospital, doctors said yesterday.

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Three Americans receive treatment on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013

The men, who collectively suffered injuries to their faces, arms, legs and internal organs when a piece of unexploded ordnance (UXO) they were disarming exploded, were evacuated on Tuesday night and yesterday afternoon from two hospitals in Phnom Penh to Bangkok’s highly regarded Bumrungrad International Hospital.

Calmette Hospital officials said the most critically injured of the three could not be airlifted until yesterday afternoon, when he had stabilised following an emergency operation there on Tuesday night to staunch internal bleeding.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources at Bumrungrad confirmed the men had arrived.

Both men who were evacuated from Royal Rattanak Hospital Tuesday night spent hours in the operating room and were stable and in recovery as of yesterday evening.

Three marines and a US contractor employed by the demining NGO Golden West Humanitarian Foundation were injured in the Tuesday blast, US Embassy spokesman John Simmons said yesterday.

The contractor suffered multiple injuries to his chest, abdomen and leg, according to a doctor at Royal Rattanak and underwent a three-hour operation with “no complications”, said a nurse at Bamrungrad. The other man to be sent from Royal Rattanak last night suffered a neck injury, for which he was operated on yesterday afternoon.

No information was forthcoming on the most critically injured of the marines, though Simmons confirmed he had arrived in Bangkok. The fourth man was airlifted from Calmette Hospital on Tuesday night after being treated for broken bones in his hand and lacerations.

Long way to recovery for injured marinesLong way to recovery for injured marines
18 January 2013

Two US Marines injured in a demining accident on Tuesday that wounded four were still in the intensive-care unit last night following a series of harrowing operations.

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Sergeant Phillip McGill (L) shows a fellow marine how to detonate TNT during a 2011 training session in the US

A source at the Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok said both men were in a stable condition, but stressed it was too early to say whether they would require further surgery or to predict when they might be released.

Sergeant David Crouse was “recovering OK” after two operations on Wednesday — one to remove shrapnel from wounds in both arms, the other to insert a prosthetic left eye.

“He’s in good condition now,” the source said.

Sergeant Phillip McGill, the second, and more severely injured, of the two, remained on a respirator yesterday after a six-hour abdominal and vascular surgery that began on Wednesday night and dragged into early yesterday morning.

As of yesterday afternoon, McGill was conscious and his condition was listed as stable. Two other men, Lieutenant Matthew Schaefer and Len Austin, deputy director of field operations for the demining NGO Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, were doing well and expected to make full recoveries after smaller operations on Wednesday.

*****
Asked whether Austin – who has worked with the foundation for seven years and has over two decades of demining experience – intended to return to the dangerous line of work, his colleague responded without pause. “Yes.”

'An estimated 4 to 6 million land mines and other munitions left over from three decades of armed conflict kill or maim scores of Cambodians each year, even though combat ended in the late 1990s.'

__________
On our side of the border - last weekend on Children's Day we saw this - from post:


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another from last weekend's Children's Day.
A grim reality of life on the Thai-Cambodian border, this pic shows part of an educational display from the HMAU (Humanitarian Mine Action Units) who as well as de-mining also do risk education, they attend the morning school assemblies as part of their education role for students living in at-risk border areas.
Four de-miners were killed in the process of clearing anti-vehicle mines north of here Dec 2011.

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

Quote:

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In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the US Air Force secretly dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of general purpose bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs and dart-cluster bomblets on neutral Cambodia. The action had been authorised by the then President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger.

Initially the campaign’s aim was to expose the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by Communist North Vietnamese troops. Therefore, the areas in the east of the country bordering Vietnam were worst affected. Later a massive countrywide bombing campaign was launched to support the pro-American Lon Nol government fight the communist Khmer Rouge.

As a result 600,000 Cambodians died out of a population of 7 million and another 2 million people became refugees. Today unexploded ordnance still remains a risk. Kicking or picking up unknown pieces of metal can have disastrous consequences.

For more than thirty years, it was generally accepted that 539,129 tons of bombs were dropped during Nixon’s four year campaign. The number of air raids between April 1969 and March 1973 was put at 3,530 [1]. These figures, however, have come under scrutiny recently. To explain, we must first go back to 1994.

Since 1994, the humanitarian demining offices in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency have been compiling a detailed database containing extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975.

These combat missions were conducted in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Included in the database is information about specific mission numbers, aircraft types and numbers, target locations, latitude and longitude coordinates, ordnance types, numbers of ordnance dropped, and additional information on downed aircraft.

The aim of the project is to help to speed up the clearance of unexploded ordnance that still litters the three affected Asian countries. By making this information available to governments and demining organisations, it is hoped that the locations of this deadly debris can be accurately pin pointed [2].

Initially the data was shared with Laos. As expected, it proved to be tremendously helpful. Then in November 2000, during his historic visit to Vietnam, the then US President Bill Clinton shared the information with the Vietnamese government. And again, it has been an invaluable tool.

It wasn’t until 2006 that external analysts began to study the data presented to the Vietnamese government more closely. Buried amongst all the Vietnam War information are all the dates and figures from Nixon’s secret Cambodian missions.

The true scale of the US Air Forces bombing campaign had been vastly underestimated.

The database shows that the bombing began in 1965, under Lyndon Johnson, and not in 1969 as had been believed. It also reveals that from October 1965 to August 1973, the United States dropped a staggering 2,756,941 tons of ordnance on Cambodia in 230,516 raids [3].

This figure exceeds the 2 million tons of bombs dropped in the whole of World War II, including the two nuclear bombs.

Not bad going for a country that was never even at war.

---

So, in summary: Som nom fucking nah.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

Quote:

---

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the US Air Force secretly dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of general purpose bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs and dart-cluster bomblets on neutral Cambodia. The action had been authorised by the then President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger.

Initially the campaign’s aim was to expose the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by Communist North Vietnamese troops. Therefore, the areas in the east of the country bordering Vietnam were worst affected. Later a massive countrywide bombing campaign was launched to support the pro-American Lon Nol government fight the communist Khmer Rouge.

As a result 600,000 Cambodians died out of a population of 7 million and another 2 million people became refugees. Today unexploded ordnance still remains a risk. Kicking or picking up unknown pieces of metal can have disastrous consequences.

For more than thirty years, it was generally accepted that 539,129 tons of bombs were dropped during Nixon’s four year campaign. The number of air raids between April 1969 and March 1973 was put at 3,530 [1]. These figures, however, have come under scrutiny recently. To explain, we must first go back to 1994.

Since 1994, the humanitarian demining offices in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency have been compiling a detailed database containing extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975.

These combat missions were conducted in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Included in the database is information about specific mission numbers, aircraft types and numbers, target locations, latitude and longitude coordinates, ordnance types, numbers of ordnance dropped, and additional information on downed aircraft.

The aim of the project is to help to speed up the clearance of unexploded ordnance that still litters the three affected Asian countries. By making this information available to governments and demining organisations, it is hoped that the locations of this deadly debris can be accurately pin pointed [2].

Initially the data was shared with Laos. As expected, it proved to be tremendously helpful. Then in November 2000, during his historic visit to Vietnam, the then US President Bill Clinton shared the information with the Vietnamese government. And again, it has been an invaluable tool.

It wasn’t until 2006 that external analysts began to study the data presented to the Vietnamese government more closely. Buried amongst all the Vietnam War information are all the dates and figures from Nixon’s secret Cambodian missions.

The true scale of the US Air Forces bombing campaign had been vastly underestimated.

The database shows that the bombing began in 1965, under Lyndon Johnson, and not in 1969 as had been believed. It also reveals that from October 1965 to August 1973, the United States dropped a staggering 2,756,941 tons of ordnance on Cambodia in 230,516 raids [3].

This figure exceeds the 2 million tons of bombs dropped in the whole of World War II, including the two nuclear bombs.

Not bad going for a country that was never even at war.

---

So, in summary: Som nom fucking nah.

---

by the same logic, may your unborn child die of aids for your sexual transgressions. I mean turn about is fair play, isn't it?

And if you are going to be a twat in thai, at least get it right. it is som nam na

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

So, in summary: Som nom fucking nah.

---

Bit harsh. The three marines are identified as being volunteers, there for training purposes. I'd have thought their contribution to the NGO Golden West Humanitarian Foundation was worthwhile, and certainly not deserving of this maiming.

Quote:

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The volunteer trainers, who arrived in Cambodia just days earlier, had hosted the month-long course for only a day when the accident occurred

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They have my sympathy, if not yours.

have my sympathy to . they look young . maybe you should have ago ts

A news article on landmines in Cambodia from 2 weeks ago

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Yi Am planted mines as a soldier and then lost much of a leg when he stepped on one. Now, he supports his family by making farmers’ fields safe again, a job he says he wants to do ‘forever.’

Deminers hard at work in Cambodia – at least until the money runs out
Published Saturday, Jan. 05 2013

Towering sugar palms sway in the breeze as lean dogs scamper through overgrown fields, and voices can be heard coming from the thatched-roof houses. Located in the lush green countryside of western Cambodia an hour’s drive from the Thai border, the village of Sek Sak has spent the past 15 years trying to get back to normal. Forced to leave during their country’s bitter civil war, its people began to return after most of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge surrendered in 1998. They carried little with them. If they were to eat, they had to farm.

Marking off fields was a simple, if brutal, process: Work back from the road until someone steps on a mine. Anything beyond that was declared too dangerous, leaving Sek Sak with just enough to get by. It wasn’t until last June that professionals working with the British-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG) finally arrived to finish the job.

One of the “deminers” knows all too well how dangerous a land mine can be. Now 47, Yi Am was a soldier in the 1980s, and planted hundreds of them.

Then he stepped on one.

“It is very difficult for amputees to find work,” says Mr. Am, who lost his left leg below the knee. For years, he struggled as a farmer, but he decided in 1995 that he could better support his family by risking his life in minefields again.

His wife wants him to stop, but he says that, as well as the money, he does it to keep others from winding up like him. “I want to do this job forever.”

. . . .an estimated 945 square kilometres, is in Cambodia, where mines and other “explosive remnants of war” (munitions that failed to detonate or were simply left behind) have killed at least 19,660 people since 1979. As many as 40,000 more have lost limbs, giving their country what is believed to be the world’s largest population of amputees per capita.

When it signed the Ottawa Treaty, Cambodia had as many as 10 million anti-personnel mines, but declared it would be mine-free by 2009. The deadline has been shifted to 2020. At the current rate of demining, however, the task will require 25 more years.
more

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

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So, some US marine volunteers should be paying for the crimes of a president and his sidekick some 40 years ago? What sad logic you have. Really, how fucking stupid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goostewart

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

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So, some US marine volunteers should be paying for the crimes of a president and his sidekick some 40 years ago? What sad logic you have. Really, how fucking stupid.

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Don't mind him. He's a sad, pathetic 'Merkin-hater. Every forum seems to have at least one of his ilk...:mid:

Poor bastards doing a dangerous job for a pittance.Always going to be at least one dick commenting.

If it had been Henry Kissinger or William Westmoreland who'd been blown up, fair enough, I would have said som nam nah. But you can hardly say that to army personnel clearing mines today who may not even have been born at the time of the Vietnam war.

They should teach convicted pedos to do this. Instead of sentencing them to 'X' amount of years in prison, they should be given a set number of mines they have to defuse.

They find them daily here in southern Laos on the minesite i work on, Cambodia is more dangerous the uxo boys tell me, more landmines than bombs from the sky, we have had a few scares despite very intensive search procedures
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https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2013/01/2217.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

---

who cares what you think. These are guys that volunteered to help clear up the mess the stupid US arses created years ago

They deserve praise for their obviously dangerous job

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

Quote:

---

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the US Air Force secretly dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of general purpose bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs and dart-cluster bomblets on neutral Cambodia. The action had been authorised by the then President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger.

Initially the campaign’s aim was to expose the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by Communist North Vietnamese troops. Therefore, the areas in the east of the country bordering Vietnam were worst affected. Later a massive countrywide bombing campaign was launched to support the pro-American Lon Nol government fight the communist Khmer Rouge.

As a result 600,000 Cambodians died out of a population of 7 million and another 2 million people became refugees. Today unexploded ordnance still remains a risk. Kicking or picking up unknown pieces of metal can have disastrous consequences.

For more than thirty years, it was generally accepted that 539,129 tons of bombs were dropped during Nixon’s four year campaign. The number of air raids between April 1969 and March 1973 was put at 3,530 [1]. These figures, however, have come under scrutiny recently. To explain, we must first go back to 1994.

Since 1994, the humanitarian demining offices in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency have been compiling a detailed database containing extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975.

These combat missions were conducted in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Included in the database is information about specific mission numbers, aircraft types and numbers, target locations, latitude and longitude coordinates, ordnance types, numbers of ordnance dropped, and additional information on downed aircraft.

The aim of the project is to help to speed up the clearance of unexploded ordnance that still litters the three affected Asian countries. By making this information available to governments and demining organisations, it is hoped that the locations of this deadly debris can be accurately pin pointed [2].

Initially the data was shared with Laos. As expected, it proved to be tremendously helpful. Then in November 2000, during his historic visit to Vietnam, the then US President Bill Clinton shared the information with the Vietnamese government. And again, it has been an invaluable tool.

It wasn’t until 2006 that external analysts began to study the data presented to the Vietnamese government more closely. Buried amongst all the Vietnam War information are all the dates and figures from Nixon’s secret Cambodian missions.

The true scale of the US Air Forces bombing campaign had been vastly underestimated.

The database shows that the bombing began in 1965, under Lyndon Johnson, and not in 1969 as had been believed. It also reveals that from October 1965 to August 1973, the United States dropped a staggering 2,756,941 tons of ordnance on Cambodia in 230,516 raids [3].

This figure exceeds the 2 million tons of bombs dropped in the whole of World War II, including the two nuclear bombs.

Not bad going for a country that was never even at war.

---

So, in summary: Som nom fucking nah.

---

Indeed.
All of a sudden they've got religion.

Fcuk 'em then and fuck 'em now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrAndy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by khmen

Can't say I feel much sympathy for US marines injured by UXO's in Cambodia. Actually, I feel no sympathy whatsoever:

---

who cares what you think. These are guys that volunteered to help clear up the mess the stupid US arses created years ago

They deserve praise for their obviously dangerous job

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Got that right DrAndy!

These 'Merkin-bashers in the guise of bad-mouthing some Marines who did this volunteering give me gas.

A bunch of REMF's for sure.

Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers, for sure...

You can't be all nationalistic and proud of your country and distance yourself from it when it is convenient.

So it was the Viet war, another time and another place. But it ain't over is it?

Iraq. Bomb, bomb Iran. :sexy:


Can't say about these guys. But whoever flies his flag and brags about his country and it's history is tied to that stance, for better or worse. Else he's just another spineless twat seeking credit while ducking responsibility.

Kissinger et al may not still be running the show, but there's plenty 'heroes' to take their place.

OK, I made a cuntish post. I retract the second part of that statement, "som nom nah", these individuals didn't deserve this, but still stand by the first part "hard to feel much sympathy".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by t.s

by the same logic, may your unborn child die of aids for your sexual transgressions. I mean turn about is fair play, isn't it? And if you are going to be a twat in thai, at least get it right. it is som nam na

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No, not the same logic at all. If I'd gone around deliberatly giving aids to hundreds of thousands of people, yes, the same logic would apply.

BTW, I don't know if you're aware but there is no standard transliteration system of Thai to English so my transliteration is as valid as yours. Next.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by trabant

Bit harsh. The three marines are identified as being volunteers, there for training purposes. I'd have thought their contribution to the NGO Golden West Humanitarian Foundation was worthwhile, and certainly not deserving of this maiming.

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Maybe, but they're part of the same miltary machine which has left that part of the world with the densest concentration of UXO's on earth, they wouldn't have even been there were it not for their fathers generation putting the UXO's there. They're not civilians, they're soldiers, soldiers die in the line of duty.

They're part of the same military machine which didn't learn from its transgressions and to this day continues to maim and kill innocent civilians and foreign fighters who they have no business fighting in the first place.

Maybe if the US had recognised its mistakes, learned from them, reigned in it's atrocious crimes against humanity and had decided to use its trillion dollar military and aid budgets to become a force for good in the world it'd be easier to feel sympathy for these individuals.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goostewart

So, some US marine volunteers should be paying for the crimes of a president and his sidekick some 40 years ago? What sad logic you have. Really, how fucking stupid.

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No, they shouldn't. What the fuck were they even doing there? Plenty of skilled non US military deminers around. It doesn't right the wrongs commited because four fucking deminers go in to clear up the shit hundreds of thousands of their buddies left behind.

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Between 1964 and 1973, 9 years, more bombs were dropped on Laos by US forces than in the entire second world war combined, in the biggest covert, ILLEGAL bombing campaigns in history. It is estimated that during this 9 year period, a B-52 payload hit Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day. This equated to 2 tonnes of bombs per capita, or 2 million tonnes of bombs in total, over half a million plus bombing raids.

An estimated 260 million bombs were dropped, of which 80 million didn't detonate, leaving a long lasting legacy of UXO fatalities to this day, mainly involving children and farmers.Up to 20'000 casualties occur every year, nearly half prove fatal. The manufacturer of the cluster bombs used, Honeywell, estimated 20-30% failure to detonate rate, so they were dropped in full knowledge that the legacy would last for decades.

Over the past 16 years the US has spent an average of $3 million a year on UXO clearance, during their bombing campaigns they spent $17 million per day. (In todays money)

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Feel sorry for the Boys (although using a live mine for a teaching demonstration is a tad daft). However, they should not have to be volunteers. The US should be doing it and footing the bill. Saw a program on the box where an Scandinavian bloke there clearing mines said it would take a million men, 10 yrs + to clear all of the ordinance and mines left in Cambodia and Laos. Just a fecking joke; After all, why do so many of these 750 lb bombs fail to go off when they are dropped? I guess you just have to look at the build quality of the typical american car to understand why.

Sorry for the boys, but they are alive. Thousands of Cambodians and Laos nationals are not alive, and other still dying every day because of this problem, and the USA are morally bound to sort it out and quickly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Don't mind him. He's a sad, pathetic 'Merkin-hater. Every forum seems to have at least one of his ilk...

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No, I'm not a merkin hater, I'm a merkin military machine and foreign policy hater. Big difference.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Got that right DrAndy! These 'Merkin-bashers in the guise of bad-mouthing some Marines who did this volunteering give me gas. A bunch of REMF's for sure.

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Yeah, plenty of the people who laid waste to the region were also volunteers, but I suppose in your warped right-wing republican mind they were heroes, right? Too fucking right, REMF. I would never be so indoctrinated as to allow myself to be put on the frontline by a paranoid mass murdering govt to further their insiduous goals.

I'd fight for my country if under attack, I'd never travel to foreign lands to maim and murder innocent people because the govt tell me they're evil and a threat to me when in reality they're not.

You would, because you're a daft indoctrinated twat, whatever, but don't make out you or any of your comrades who have died fighting illegal wars are heroes, you're the bad guys but you're too stupid to realise it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrAndy

who cares what you think. These are guys that volunteered to help clear up the mess the stupid US arses created years ago They deserve praise for their obviously dangerous job

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You, obviously, as you felt the need to highlight that, press q-quote, then type a response.

So, they volunteered to train a few deminers, doesn't alter the fact that they also voluntarily chose to join the organisation who put them there in the first place, the organisation which this very minute is flying unmanned drones about killing people in a different part of the world.

Maybe the US should channel all of its trillion dollar military budget into making amends for their previous atrocities in the region. If they did that, they'd be fully worthy of respect and the UXO clearance programs would be achieved in no time. However, they feel that money is better invested elsewhere killing other peoples rather than helping to negate the terrible legacy they have left behind.