MARAGONDON, Cavite — A local fisherman here found an unexploded vintage bomb on Thursday along the shore of Carabao Island, a stretch of islet about a kilometer off the coast of this town.
Senior Insp. Redentor Talay, officer-in-charge of the town police, upon receiving the sketchy report ordered Senior Inspector Federico Lindo Jr., the deputy chief of police, with the assistance of Special Weapons and Tactics team of the Cavite Provincial Police Office (PPO), to proceed to the site to verify the report.
Initial investigation showed the fisherman, Arvin Baldomero Plaquia, 38, found the vintage unexploded ordnance while fishing near Carabao Island and immediately reported the discovery to the town police.
Plaquia is a member of the Maragondon “Bantay Dagat” and a resident of Sta. Mercedezville in Barangay Pinagsanhan-B here, where Carabao Island belongs.
The bomb, measuring 3 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, was immediately brought to the Cavite PPO SWAT office in Cuartel, Imus City for proper disposition.
Investigators and elder villagers believed the unexploded vintage bomb could be among those left when Carabao Island was established as one of the harbor defense ports, then known as Fort Frank by the US Forces in the 1900s at the southern entrance of the Manila Bay.
The 18-hectare narrow island is now transformed by the local government into a tourism destination with its jagged rocky cliffs and pebbled shores, topped by a patch of green at an elevation of some 56 meters above sea level. (Dennis Abrina/PNA)
