Bomb Disposal


CMAC dive team takes to the Mekong River


The whole team is invovled in every decision


The most dangerous part of field ops: lift bag inflation


K 40


andal Province, Cambodia – On a baking May morning this year, seven men in floppy hats, black shorts and long-sleeved blue shirts


emblazoned with the words ‘CMAC Dive’ set off on a low wooden boat across the Mekong River a few miles south of the capital Phnom Penh. It was the peak of Cambodia’s hot


season, the relentless string of mid- year months when the temperature regularly hits 104°F (40°C), and the


Magazine


group was headed to a village on the opposite bank where, several weeks earlier, a fisherman had snagged his net. Diving 20 feet (6m) into the Mekong’s murky depths, he’d quickly worked out that his net was caught on a large bomb, half-buried nose-down in the mud. A year ago there would have


been nowhere for the fisherman to report his find, and this bomb – a 500-pound U.S.-made Mark 82, as it turned out – would likely have remained in the river near the landing for the local ferry or, more dangerously, been recovered by villagers, cut up and sold for scrap.


developing our country – especially when building ports or bridges


Tis job is very important for But these days, thanks to a unique


program, there is a solution: the seven men on the boat are members of Cambodia’s first dive team who have acquired the skills, through a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and run by U.S. non- profit the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, to clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) from underwater.


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