Showing posts with label UXO accidents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UXO accidents. Show all posts

Monday, March 6, 2006

THREE YEARS OLD BOY INJURED IN A UXO ACCIDENT IN QUANG TRI, VIET NAM

When I first received the brief information over the phone about the accident, I couldn�t imagine how a three years old boy could involve in a UXO accident. For he is too small to cause anything that lead to a detonation of a UXO, and that UXO is not that available for small kids like him to lay a finger on. If he was a by-stander then why there was no other casualty reported. I took the truck out of the garage, head to the Quang Tri general hospital, still trying to answer those questions to myself.

The boy was sleeping as the pain killer still had its effect. The doctors had just had an operation to remove fragments. He had black eyes, but it was difficult to tell whether they were also injured or not. The boy was cared by his grandmother while his father had just gone out to get some medicine for him. Copy of Nguyen Van Linh 3.JPG

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Linh spent almost the entire morning of February 26th, 2006 playing by himself, alone. His mother was too busy taking care of Linh�s younger sibling, who was just several months of age; his father had gone to the farm and his 5 year-old brother had gone with a 7 year-old neighbor boy playing somewhere. Linh came and sat at the threshold, staring out into the front yard... And then he saw his brother with the neighbor boy came back, discussing something lively. Linh walked out to meet them but the elders seemed didn�t want to play with the small kid, thus they quickly threw something into a corner of the yard, turned around and ran away.
Linh felt so disappointed. He turned to walk back into the house, and when he was turning, he saw the thing that the elder boys had left at the corner. Linh walked towards it, picked it up. The boy took the device for a sweet potato with red mud stuck out side, and that made him feel hungry. Just as he entered the kitchen, he saw his father arrived home. The boy just said hi to his father and kept walking into the kitchen. He sat in front of the fire, and put the �potato� into the fire to bake it (he had learned this from his older brother and often does this whenever hungry).
Nobody knew what was happening in the kitchen. As when Linh�s father got home, he entered the house, poured himself a huge glass of water and sat at the threshold to drink. Then there came the explosion from the kitchen. Linh received multiple injuries in his left wrist, fingers, his face and his legs. Luckily, there was no injury in vital parts.

Monday, January 23, 2006

14-Year-Old Boy Lost Hand in War-Era Munition Accident

It was Sunday, January 8, 2006, a day off school and Nguyen The Thang was busy in the backyard moving some bonsai trees to plant in the front entrance. Tet, the Vietnamese traditional Newyear festival is coming in two weeks, and everyone is busy preparing their home for a new appearance to welcom the lunar new year.

While planting the third tree, Thang dug up something metal. The conical shape of the item attracted his curiosity. Thang bended down, picked it up for a close look. The item was a bit heavy, rusty looking and stuck with dirt. The 8 grade student sat down and tapped it against a rock to get loose the dirt. Beyond his expectation, the thing detonated right in his hand. Copy of 2354_Nguyen The Thang 04.JPG

Thang was immediately transported to the commune aid station for first aids and forwarded to the provincial hospital for intensive treatment of his injuries. The doctors have saved his life but unable to keep his left hand as the blast had totally crushed it.
Thang is from Hoa Thuy commune, Le Thuy district, Quang Binh province. His village is just north of the former DMZ.