Possible 51-year-old Vietnam War bomb found in Antelope
ANTELOPE – A bomb unearthed by a construction crew near the Roseville Railyards is thought to be more than 50 years old.
According to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, it was found by a construction crew on the corner of Poker Lane and Antelope North Road. The bomb has since been removed and is being disposed of somewhere safe.
But what is a five-decade-old bomb doing in the Antelope area? Well, it's thought to have been from the 1973 Roseville yard disaster when 18 boxcars of munition for the Vietnam War were passing through Roseville.
"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," said the president of the Citrus Heights Historical Society Larry Fritz.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department hasn't confirmed the bomb's origins. But Fritz forwarded a photo of the bomb to his friend who worked on the clean up effort after the explosions in 1973.
"He confirmed it. He said 'yeah that's one of the bombs,'" said Fritz.
Fritz himself lived through the explosions. He says roughly 1,200 bombs were set off over the course of a day and a half. Fortunately, no one was killed. However, there were dozens of people injured.
Fritz lived roughly two and a half miles from the epicenter of the blast, and says everyone living there at the time can remember exactly where they were when the bombs started going off. Then the National Guard was brought in.
"I could look out my front door and see National Guard soldiers in uniforms with military trucks lining Auburn Boulevard. It looked like a war zone for a day and a half. It felt like this was during the era of the Vietnam War. It really felt like the war had come to Citrus Heights and was on our doorsteps," said Fritz.
Fritz says the explosions blew out a good portion of the railyard, and back then the priority was to get the trains back up and running. So a thorough investigation may have been lacking, possibly leaving behind the munition. He says it's possible there could be more.
We reached out to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office but didn't hear back.
