A minor panic ensued this morning when an Icelandic laundry washed some dynamite.
A potentially dangerous situation arose a short while ago when explosives intended for blasting North Iceland’s new Vaðlaheiðargöng road tunnel ended up at the Grand Þvottur laundry in Akureyri for washing, DV.is reports.
The explosives were concealed in the pocket of a worker’s overalls and were not discovered until after the work clothing had been washed. Dynamite can be sensitive to movement and the washing machine’s spin cycle could have ended in a large explosion.
“There were three red sticks in the overalls’ pocket,” the laundry owner said. Grand Þvottur is in charge of regularly washing all work clothes for the tunnel building project. The manager says he put the explosives in a bucket as soon as they were discovered, and then waited for a contractor site supervisor to arrive and pick them up. “He said he was going to go and show them to the workers and show them what could be hiding in the pockets of overalls,” the manager said.
According to anonymous DV sources, the procedures associated with explosives are poor at the tunnel building site and today’s incident is just one of several already documented.
