The City of Hollister Dog Park reopened Oct.23, after a thorough search of the site near the Hollister Municipal Airport yielded only metal junk—and no more unexploded bombs like the one that had closed the park for more than a month.
Airport Manager Mike Chambless said city crews on Tuesday carefully dug into five holes that had been identified by special ground-penetrating radar as containing metal, and found scrap metal and old metal fence posts.
The spots in the park had been marked with bright pink spray paint by a firm hired by the city earlier this month after an unexploded World War II-era bomb was found under the dog park dirt by crews installing a fiber optic cable in early September.
The crews had unearthed a dusty metal cylinder about the size of a bowling pin.
Officials said at the time that even though the device was “live” they believed there was little danger—Hollister Mayor Ignacio Velazquez even held it and posed for pictures, and it was displayed at a council meeting. Just to be on the safe side, it was later detonated by a Monterey County bomb squad. No one was injured. The training bombs contain phosphorus and black powder.
The City Council voted early this month to hire a firm to use ground-penetrating radar to inspect the entire dog park area. The initial cost is $7,000.
Chambless said he found a 1942 map of the airport site, which showed that there had been an incinerator at the current site of the dog park. The dog park is several hundred yards south of the runway and hangars at the city airport, which also is home to a Cal Fire aerial firefighting crew and general aviation, helicopter, flight school and glider facilities.
He said he was confident the city needed to look no further than the former incinerator site for possible unexploded bombs based on information he obtained from the Army Corps of Engineers. He said the government reports showed that during World War II, military planes conducted practice bombing runs several miles away from the current airport, at five different locations.
Chambless said that since no more digging is planned in the dog park area, and since it has been scanned by the ground-penetrating radar, there is no danger at the site.
He said the city is planning on improvements to the dog park, including wire mesh underlayment to prevent ground squirrels, and new turf. Velazquez this week said. “I’m sure anytime they’re going to do anymore work in the area, they’ll screen for it.”
