A routine morning at a Malibu state seashore turned tense Sunday when a army explosive — recognized as a Nineteen Fifties-era Super Bazooka spherical — washed ashore close to Naval Base Ventura County and had to be detonated in place.
Beachgoers at Mugu Beach were cleared from the space around 10:30 a.m. after the unexploded anti-tank spherical was noticed in the sand, prompting California State Parks Police to call the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.
“A piece of military ordnance — pretty much what you’d expect a missile to look like — had washed up on the beach, which is pretty common in that area because it’s directly next to the Navy base,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad Detective Dan Turock instructed the California Post.
Turock said the machine was rapidly recognized as a Super Bazooka spherical, an anti-tank weapon developed after World War II and used during the Korean War.
Because it was confirmed to be army ordnance, the U.S. Navy took over the response. Bomb technicians from Naval Base Ventura County decided it was too dangerous to transfer and detonated it where it was discovered.
“They examined the Super Bazooka round, and they said, ‘Hey, this thing may still contain explosives. So instead of moving it, we’re just going to blow it up right here on the beach.’”
Technicians dug a gap in the sand, positioned the machine inside, and coordinated with native authorities to secure the space. The Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) was shut down briefly for the detonation.
“We filled in the hole, and we were done for the day,” Turock said. The spherical was utterly destroyed in the explosion. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad shared a video of the detonation on its Instagram account, where a loud growth can be heard adopted by back smoke rising in the air.
“It just disintegrated into nothing. It completely evaporates,” he said. “There was nothing left of it, it just totally turned to dust.”
The seashore was closed for about three hours, Turock said, while the roadway was shut down for only about 5 minutes during the precise detonation.
Incidents like this, he added, are not uncommon for that explicit stretch of shoreline.
“In the last three years we’ve had about 10 of these — the same exact thing happen at that same exact beach — so it’s fairly common.”
Turock said that half of the seashore belonged to the army and was used for coaching. “They would shoot all those [bazookas] onto the beach, not knowing that in 30 years it was going to become a public beach and still have all that stuff under the sand.”
While the Super Bazooka spherical did not have a timer or self-detonating mechanism, it still posed a severe risk, if disturbed.
“It could be sensitive to moving it,” Turock warned. “If you touch it or move it around, there is a possibility that it could detonate if you move it enough or drop it. If anyone sees something like that, just leave it where it is and call 911,” Turock said.