Having just moved into their home on Navajo Way in 1956, Louise Weatherholt’s small children often spent the afternoons exploring their new neighborhood, which in those days consisted mainly of cow pastures and marshes. The kids ventured out to Danube Road, which was just a dirt road, and played on mounds of more dirt in the open fields near what is Yucatan Drive, south of Lake Underhill Road.
Sometimes, she said, they would bring back some mementos of their adventures — bullets and live shells. One shell, she remembers, was six inches long. “The kids many times brought over to the house shells they had found,” she said. “All the kids played down there. They used to call it Bullet Hill. Thank goodness my husband knew what it was and disposed of it.”
What her children had discovered were the remnants left over from the Orlando Range and Chemical Yard, 2,100 acres of land that were leased by the U.S. government from 1943-46 for military training and testing. The area roughly covers from east of Semoran Boulevard past Chickasaw Trail, and from north of Lake Underhill Road down to Curry Ford Road. It was here that the military tested weapons, munitions and chemicals in great abundance.
With bleachers set up to hold upwards of 1,000 onlookers, incendiaries of varying strength were set off for demonstration. Aerial photos from 1947, taken along what is now Colton and Egan drives, show large craters, the result of simulating a 300- pound bomb, without the deadly metal fragments. There is also evidence of “igloos,” earthen- covered mounds where pyrotechnics and WWII-era incendiary bombs were stored.
On the eastern edge of what is Capehart Park today, a toxic gas storage yard held 55- gallon drums of chemicals such as liquid mustard, which cause blisters and lesions upon contact. Some of these munitions and chemicals may remain today, hidden in the earth and groundwater. To find out, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin an exhaustive investigation of the area, starting in January 2009, by testing soil and groundwater samples.
“Right now, we don’t know what we have,” Wandell Carlton, project manager for the Army Corps, told a crowd of more than 100 anxious homeowners at last week’s first public meeting on the issue. “We have to find out if there is a problem, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll look as hard as we can to find something.”
A second WWII bombing range
This is not the first time that the area
has been checked. But in the wake of the
potentially dangerous debacle uncovered
at the Pinecastle Jeep Range near Vista
Lakes, the Corps is planning another
sweep of this training ground.
In fact, military records dug up as a
result of the Pinecastle Jeep Range investigation
have shed new light on what
went on at the Azalea Park site.
“We discovered new historical documents that revealed the Army used this site for similar purposes as Pinecastle,” said Nancy Sticht, public information officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Originally, this site was thought to be nothing more than a military rifle range, with perhaps only small-arms munitions left behind. But these new documents show that the site, and its purpose, were expanded in 1943.
The Orlando Range and Chemical Yard is actually two distinct areas with two different purposes — the south end was used primarily for the testing of incendiary bombs, the north end was where chemicals were used and stored. In 1950 the land that had been designated as a toxic gas storage yard was inspected and deemed safe for civilian use. It did not have any dangerous materials, and no restrictions were placed on the future development of the land.
Since the 1960s, the site has been fully developed with businesses, homes, schools and a park. In the ensuing decades, the site was reviewed at least twice more by the Army Corps, most recently in 2004. In August of last year the Army Corps published a study stating that no hazards had ever been identified on the site, but recommended another inspection be undertaken in the future.
Carlton said most of the Orlando Range and Chemical Yard was never used for weapons and chemical testing, with only about 30 acres used for military demonstrations. He also noted that there has never been any indication of explosives or chemical problems in the area since World War II. However, during the upcoming investigation, he said there will be two primary areas of concern: along Colton Drive, south of Chickasaw Elementary School, where the bombing range was located; as well as Egan Drive, just east of Capehart Park, near where the chemicals were kept.
Carlton explained that the situation in Azalea Park and Vista Lakes, where he also heads up the Army Corps’ investigation, is not that unusual because in the 1940s the U.S. government used many sites across Florida for military testing, known as Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS). Due to recent findings, however, the Army Corps is now looking more closely at the entire Orlando area, he said.
This added focus has led to identifying seven sites locally used for military testing, including an investigation that is set to begin next month near Orlando Executive Airport. But it is the Pinecastle Jeep Range — a 12,500-acre WWII bomb demonstration site in East Orlando — that has produced the biggest outcry from the public.
So far the investigation there, which includes Odyssey Middle School, has yielded more than 300 munitions and more than 14 tons of bomb debris, as well as questions about government competency. “We don’t like to be surprised either and have egg on our face,” Carlton said.
Possible health effects
Residents also do not like finding out
— many decades later — that their
homes lie within a potentially dangerous
World War II testing site.
“Why is it taking you people so long to find out how dangerous this place is?” asked Weatherholt, who this week is marking 52 years in her home. In addition, Weatherholt wonders about the possible health problems associated with the on-site chemicals. Noting that two of her sons have thyroid conditions, she is worried that ground and water contamination might pose a health risk for everyone in the area.
“I think there is a very high incidence of cancer in our neighborhood,” she said. Mary Lobianco, who resides on Egan Drive where her parents first purchased the home in 1985, also believes her neighborhood may have been victimized. She said five of the first six houses on Egan Drive, south of Lake Underhill Road, had household members struck by cancer. Her own father died of lung cancer.
“[Army Corps officials] didn’t really say what the long-term effects are of these chemicals. We just don’t know,” she said. Officials did say that public meetings will periodically be held in the coming months, as needed, and that residents will receive written notice prior to the field work beginning in January. Residents must provide permission for their property to be tested.
For more information, visit www.saj.usace.army.mil or call the the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, at 800-291-9413.
