Things are now all clear in Millington after three tense hours at the Naval Support Activity Mid-South base.
Security crews temporarily shut down and evacuated sections of the base and called in bomb squads. This, after service members found seven unaccounted for torpedoes in the Army Reserve Unit area.
Those on command took the alert seriously since thousands were on the base at the time.
While no foul play is suspected, an investigation is underway to find out the original location of those explosives.
Rick Burzynski served 14 years at the naval station in Millington and knows firsthand just how rare base-wide alerts are, the kind which came down Thursday morning.
“I don’t think we had any, the only one I remember was when 9/11 occurred,” Burzynski said.
The scare came after service members noticed seven explosives not on the list during a routine weapons check. Naval base security shut down the Singleton gate near those explosives and some areas were temporarily locked down.
“If we have the indication that we have ordinance or anything that will endanger the personnel of this installation, we will take those precautions,”
After hours of those precautions, the responding bomb squads safely took the explosives off the base and the naval station returned to normal operations by early afternoon.
“If it happens again tomorrow, we will do it the same way,” Capt. Ross said. “We train for this, or as we often say, we like to train the way we fight, and I think the team did that today.”
Thursday night, leaders on base will go over how the team responded during the alert and make any adjustments as needed.
