The old military ordinance was discovered Wednesday on an unnamed stretch of beach near the 1800 block of South Highway A1A, according to a Facebook post from the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office is “pretty sure” the ordinance was an old landmine, Debbie Carson, the office’s media relations officer, tells GLM.
Carson says that Vero Beach, the second most populous city in Indian River County, was a military training base for World War II. Therefore, finding old military ordinances is “pretty common.”
Wednesday’s landmine was “at least the second or third time” the sheriff’s office dealt with an ordinance in 2022, Carson said.
Sheriff’s deputies monitored the scene while waiting for explosives specialists from Patrick Air Force Base, who safely removed the mine. No one was injured, the sheriff’s office says.
“We always want people to be careful about” so-called military ordinances, Carson said. “The chances that one of them could still explode after all this time and being exposed to salt water are pretty slim.”
Still, beachgoers who see a suspicious object on the beach should be careful and call the police, Carson says.
In the 1940s, Indian River County was used as a Marine Air Squadron base and training ground for naval and marine aviators, according to the Florida Museum of History.