And while public safety provisions remain a matter of dispute, what about the wider risk of having so many of these bombs lying around communities across Belize?
With over 1,500 UXOs destroyed, we can get a sense of the public threat they posed. And Usher says that is exactly why the public recovery campaign was essential:
Reporter:
"And so now that we have an approximation of the totality of the unexploded ordinances that are lying around, how would you assess the threat to public safety that was in our midst? "
Francis Usher, CEO National Defence & Border Security
"So I would say that there are many things in society that can cause a lot of harm, and these are just one of them. I think that we have some curious people that will experiment with these old, as they refer to them, relics, not knowing the magnitude of them. So they did, as evidenced in Carmelita, they do pose some risk to society. And that's what really got us into gear and got us into motion as far as we need to go on a countrywide campaign to gather up all of these, since we do have the expertise, organic to the BDF, to gather up all of these UXOs, safely transport them to a location to be stored and ultimately to be destroyed before it causes further damage. "
Reporter:
"How many of them are still out there and what's the message to individuals that still have them? "
Francis Usher, CEO National Defence & Border Security
"We aren't aware of any more out there at this moment. So if there are some that you know about, please call the BDF watchkeeper. Please call the BDF watchkeeper so we can coordinate the safe transportation to a holding location and then ultimately the destruction of it. "
