Grenades, shells, incendiary sticks… In Saint-Nazaire, the emptying of a pond reveals an astonishing arsenal

The Bois Joalland pond, in Saint-Nazaire, had the reputation of being a peaceful body of water. This apparent tranquility, however, hid a much more explosive threat. The pyrotechnic decontamination operations carried out on site for several weeks, in parallel with the gradual emptying of the pond which began on September 7, have in fact revealed a whole unsuspected arsenal at the bottom of the basin. And a frightening amount of scrap metal of all kinds.

Commissioned by the city of Saint-Nazaire, the company Deminetec, specializing in pyrotechnic decontamination, collected more than 1,500 previously detected metal objects. The most dangerous holds? Three grenades, a shell, shrapnel and several incendiary sticks. Several of these remains of weapons could date from the fighting in the Saint-Nazaire pocket at the end of the Second World War.

“A painstaking job”

For each dangerous discovery, the municipality called on a demining team from Loire-Atlantique civil security. “It’s painstaking work, especially since people can sometimes lose or get rid of very surprising objects in the pond,” describes a municipal spokesperson, without going into details. With an area of ​​approximately 44 hectares, the artificial pond of Bois Joalland was created in 1918 by the American army, then stationed in Saint-Nazaire. The body of water was intended to become a reservoir to supply the city with drinking water, at the time when the port city had been almost completely razed by Allied bombings.

The city of Saint-Nazaire has initiated the draining of the pond to relieve its dam in anticipation of the work to consolidate the structure. It suffered a partial collapse at the end of October, after worrying cracks were detected during the summer. Water activities, usually very frequent at Bois Joalland, have been interrupted since September 28.