the most recent casualty of WW1, 89 years after the armistice
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleID=671JACEC&PostCode=8950
rough translation
"on 29 October, a farmer was killed at the age of 58 when an unexploded shell from WW1 exploded...
Like many farmers in Flanders, he had found several shells while working the land, and like usual, they just pile them up till Dovo, the Belgian army's bomb squad could come pick them up... unfortunately, something had gone wrong
Neighbors had heard the explosion on Friday , and found the lifeless body, police was able to determine the cause of the explosion by all the shrapnel in bedded in a truck parked a bit further..."
farmers around here, they dig up old ammo all the time
it's not every once and a while, it's weekly, daily that stuff is found
they find 89 year old ammunition, usually nothing happens and it's become a fact of life for them... every once in a while, it goes wrong...
Dovo still makes weekly rounds in the country side, they look for little piles of rusty shells, they load it up and take it to their site, not far from where i live
if you're ever in Flanders, walking in the country side, and you see something like this... don't go thinking it's unused, deactivated ammo... you really better not go poking it with a stick to figure out what it is.
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?articleID=KM1KJHFS
rough translation :
"the shells they can identify as non toxic, usually get blown up in a big blast pit
nobody here even looks up when they hear a massive blast coming from the woods
until 1980 , toxic ones got dumped in the see ( gulf of Gascogne ), but since the environmental awareness grew, this was stopped)
between 1980 and 1999, the stock pile of toxic shells had grown to 30 000
and a safe processing facility was taken into use
since 1999 , about 7500 toxic shells had been processed, and this week they started up a new Contained Detonation Chamber (CDC) capable of taking care of the bigger caliber toxic ordnance
manufactured by Kobe Steel, it's the only one in existence in the world
the shells get detonated in the blast chamber, and processed so all toxic contamination is eliminated..."