Prague, Nov 28 (CTK) – Czech military’s sappers have completed the five-year process of clearing the Brdy protected area, former military ground now partly opened to the public, of ammunition, Jana Sedlackova, spokeswoman for the 15th engineering battalion, wrote on the army’s web on Tuesday.
The sappers uncovered almost 10,000 pieces of unexploded ammunition, mainly post-war artillery, rocket and tank ammunition, on the area of almost 13,000 hectares, Sedlackova wrote.
The clearance was needed in connection with the planned complete opening of the area to civilians.
The Brdy military training ground, southwest of Prague, was abolished in January 2016 and a protected landscape area was declared in its place.
Forty soldiers dealt with the decontamination, passing through 15-20 hectares of land a day.
Still, some locations remain in Brdy where pyrotechnic survey could not be done.
Based on the survey, six high-impact areas were determined, into which entry has to be permanently banned due to the high content of unexploded ammunition.
Besides, there are further areas difficult to access, such as rocks, water surfaces, marshes and bogs, which could not be cleared of ammunition at the moment.
The sappers were conducting visual control of the terrain and used metal detectors in selected places.
We mainly found post-war era ammunition used by the Warsaw Pact armies, but also German WWII ammunition, one of the bomb disposal experts said.
The Brdy protected landscape area is well preserved also owing to the fact that it hosted the military grounds. It contains significant paleontological sites, as well as rare animal and plant species.
