Time | noon (12:05 GMT) |
---|---|
Date | 15 March 2008 |
Location | Gërdec, Albania |
26 dead | |
300+ injured |
At approximately noon local time on Saturday 15 March 2008, at an ex-military ammunition depot in the village of Gërdec in the Vorë Municipality, Albania (14 kilometers from Tirana, the nation's capital), U.S and Albanian munitions experts were preparing to destroy stockpiles of obsolete ammunition. The methodical destruction of the old ammo was supposed to occur with a series of small, controlled explosions, but a chain of events led to the entire stockpile going up at once. The main explosion, involving more than 400 tons of propellant in containers, destroyed hundreds of houses within a few kilometers from the depot and broke windows in cars on the Tirana-Durrës highway. A large fire caused a series of smaller but powerful explosions that continued until 2 a.m. on Sunday. The explosions could be heard as far away as the Macedonian capital of Skopje, 170 km (110 mi) away.
Thousands of artillery shells, most of them un-exploded, littered the area. The blast shattered all the windows of the terminal building at the country's only international airport, and all flights were suspended for some 40 minutes. Some 4,000 inhabitants of the zone were evacuated and offered shelter in state-owned resorts. The Government declared the zone a disaster area. According to subsequent investigations, a privately managed ammo dismantling process was ongoing in the area.
The repacking/dismantling of ammunition at the dump was being carried out by an Albanian company that had been subcontracted by Southern Ammunition Company Inc. (SAC) of Loris, South Carolina, an U.S. company. SAC won the contract to destroy ammunition in Albania through industrial dismantling.
SAC was contracted in 2006 by the Albanian Ministry of Defence for the deactivation of 100 million 7.62 mm bullets, 20 million 12.7 mm bullets, and 20 million 14.5 mm bullets. A second contract involved ammunition from 40 mm up to 152 mm.
After signing the contract with the MoD, SAC subcontracted the work to Alb-Demil, an Albanian subcontractor.
Officially, Albanian authorities confirmed 26 deaths in the explosions. Officials report the number of injured people at over 300. According to figures published by the Prime Minister's Office, 2,306 buildings were damaged or destroyed in the explosions. Of these, 318 houses were destroyed completely, 200 buildings were seriously damaged, and 188 buildings were less seriously damaged.