A family narrowly avoided disaster after posing for holiday snaps next to what they thought was a buoy – but which actually turned out to an unexploded World War II MINE.
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PHOTO: Gareth Gravell’s children, Ellis and Erin, climb on a barnacle-covered object at a beach in South Wales on Aug. 12, 2015.
“I even made the joke that it was a big bomb at the time but did not think anything of it”.
Kelly Gravell, 32, from Burry Port, Carmarthenshire, took kids Erin and Ellis to the town’s beach for a family day out last Wednesday and posed for photographs with the 70-year-old bomb.
“I saw the pictures today and thought it couldn’t be the same one they were playing with”.
“My children took their boogie boards down and we were going out to the sea”, Kelly Gravell of Burry Port, Wales, said.
Gravell told ABC News she, her husband, and two kids went to their local beach for a picnic on Aug. 12, when the children noticed something had washed up onto the sand.
Allison Thomas-David, Carmarthenshire County Council press and communications officer, said the coastguard found the bomb and notified the bomb squad.
Following the incident the fortunate dad said he was more concerned about the barnacles on the rusty shell and it never once occurred to him that his children were in danger. “We realize now just how lucky we were”.
Crowds turned out in force to see the Second World War mine on the beach. Thomas-David said mistaking the bomb for a buoy was understandable – the object became recognizable once the barnacles fell off.
“We were close to disaster, it’s shocking”.
Footage from the scene showed a huge explosion on the far side of the harbour after experts detonated the device. “Obviously we evacuated the beach straightaway”.
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She added that in light of their experience, they will be more mindful of foreign items that wash up onto the beach.
