World War II ordnance findings in downtown Charleston a rarity

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Just this week, Charleston Police and the Air Force were called out to 1300 Meeting Street because two World War II ordnances were dug up by construction crews, leading to traffic delays for the area and an evacuation perimeter around the site.

Dr. Eric Poplin is an archaeologist in Charleston working for Brockton and Associates, a consulting service that works with construction companies to determine if they might affect historical sites.

Dr. Poplin said this certainly isn’t the first event like this to happen, as artillery shells are found on the order of once a month in Charleston. Most date from the Civil War era, however. A World War II-era ordnance is rare.

"To my knowledge, this is the first time that World War II ordnances, something of that magnitude. has been found," Poplin said.

"During construction, most of the things that are found are Civil War-related. Most definitely that is common, and especially below Calhoun Street towards White Point Garden," he added.

“Most of the ordnances you find in Charleston are Civil War-era artillery shells. They were fired from federal ships or land batteries towards the city or towards land batteries from the city and it was continuous shelling around the city, so there is a lot of material that is around," Poplin continued.

Back in February, an antique Civil War era artillery shell was discovered by another construction crew in the basement of a downtown building being renovated on Gillon Street, near the exchange building.

While ordnances are slightly more difficult to determine if they are armed or not, bomb squads can use x-ray to figure it out.

"Depending on what the piece is, like cannon balls, they are either hollow or solid, so if they are solid they are not going to explode because they had no powder in them, they are just designed to punch holes in things. If its hollow there is a void and that means they could hold powder in them and they could be dangerous."

“There are extremes that are needed to get to in order to threaten an explosion. Heat is the worst thing needed in order to explode. There are also some that have impact fuses required to hit something in order to explode.”

“There have been some instances that I’ve heard of, not that I know of, of people having ammos around for years and they detonate it. These things can be dangerous.”

Poplin adds that if you discover an artillery shell, err on the side of caution and call local authorities as the artifacts could be dangerous.