From the 09 to the 12 in April the Navy divers belonging to the SDAI (Sminamento Difesa Antimazzi Insidiosi) nucleus of Ancona, have conducted a delicate underwater operation in the waters of Lake Varna (Bolzano), to remove 917 dangerous explosive remnants of war residuals.
The alarm of the prefecture, triggered after a report by private citizens about the presence of some likely explosive artifact, required an emergency reclamation intervention that was conducted by the Group Operating Submarine (GOS) of the Navy.
The divers have immersed themselves to search for and carry out the recognition of the reported objects that, found in a strip of seabed included between the 2 and 5 meters, have been identified as devices dating back to the First World War and of Austro-Hungarian origin.
916 rifle bombs and 1 mortar bombs were then recovered and handed over to the bombers of the 2 ° Guastatori Regiment of Trento of the Army Brigade Julia of the Army to provide for destruction inside a quarry.
"I am very satisfied with the underwater operations that we have conducted in the Varna Lake in recent years"- declared Marshal Augusto Mormile, Marshal of the SDAI Nucleus of Ancona, who also pointed out -"This is the fourth intervention we made to research and recover these dangerous explosive devices. Since last year we spent 15 days working in these waters that allowed us to remove 2.894 rifle bombs in total, each containing about 700 grams of explosives. In particular, during the last week, we have been operating in very difficult conditions: the underwater visibility below the meter and the water temperature of 7 C ° really put us to the test, but our training has allowed us to bring to term as required by the Prefecture".
These interventions represent one of the many activities that the Marine Underwater Departments lead to safeguarding public safety, also carried out in inland waters, as reiterated by the Decree of the Ministry of Defense of 28 February 2017, carrying out high-risk diving operations aimed at restoring the conditions safety of bathing and navigation.
Last year the Navy diver recovered and destroyed a total of 22.000 explosive remnants of war residuals, while from 1 January 2018 have already neutralized 3.031 from Italian seas, rivers and lakes, not counting 10.068 projectiles of caliber less than 12,7 mm also removed and destroyed.
