By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
There is no such thing as a routine day in law enforcement. That's often apparent at the Barton County Sheriff's Office when a quiet day can turn interesting in an instant when a curious resident brings an unknown item through the front door. Sheriff Brian Bellendir has seen the gamut of potentially dangerous items.
"I've seen hand grenades," he said. "I've seen ammunition, radioactive material, blasting caps, explosives, firearms; you name it, it comes wandering in the front door."
One common item is live rounds found at Cheyenne Bottoms, which once doubled as a bombing and firing range. Bellendir heard a rumor that practicing gunners would shoot as few rounds as possible to make cleaning their weapons easier later, then dump the rest of the live ammunition out as they flew over. That rumor gained credibility recently when a box of live .50 caliber shells was brought in by a curious resident. One of the shells still had the link for a belt attached.
"It's the only one I've ever seen that still had a link still on that shell," Bellendir said, "which means it had to come out of an airplane when it was still in a belt of machine gun ammunition."
Bellendir said several 75mm large artillery shells have been found at Cheyenne Bottoms and west of Great Bend recently. Blasting caps are another common item brought into the sheriff's office. Seismic surveying crews used to set off explosives and record ground activity. Blasting caps would sometimes fall off their trucks.
"The ones we see around here are a cap that is electrically fired," said Bellendir. "It is inserted either into a booster charge or into an explosive charge to set off the main explosive. A blasting cap going off sounds about like an M-80. There are several different sizes of blasting caps, but what it does is set up the initial shock to set up off the explosive."
Bellendir recalls only a few truly harrowing experiences with unknown explosives. Dynamite was once an over-the-counter purchase for farmers in the area. Several years ago, deputies were called to a property south of Great Bend to examine possible explosives.
"There's a fuel tank that goes in the back of a pickup - one of those flat ones," Bellendir said. "On top of that fuel tank, there is a piece of plywood and probably three-quarters of a case of dynamite. This was the type of explosive that had the clay with the nitroglycerin in it. You have to rotate those sticks every so often."
The nitroglycerine had oozed out of the dynamite and crystallized on the gas tank.
"You don't want to introduce any shock, friction, heat, or anything like that, but if you break some of those crystals or handle them incorrectly, that can set off that nitroglycerine," said Bellendir.
Deputies turned to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) in Wichita, who were able to treat and dissolve the crystals for safe transport. The dynamite was loaded into the back of a county sand truck, unloaded in a field, and detonated.