World War II bomb rattles man, home

BAYVIEW — One moment, Ken Cook was watching TV Tuesday night comfortably in his Perimeter Road home near Farragut State Park.

The next, an explosion outside had the Vietnam War veteran diving for cover.

"It shook our whole house, it rattled the house," he said. "It put me right on the floor. I thought a bomb was going off in our yard."

Capt. Ben Wolfinger, Kootenai County Sheriff's spokesman, said what Cook heard was "1940s vintage" military ordnance being detonated.

"It was like an armor-piercing round," Wolfinger said.

Boys found the antique explosive in an abandoned home near Bayview, returned home and told their parents, who in turn called the sheriff's department.

When a deputy found the round was live, explosives experts from Fairchild Air Force Base were called in. They detonated the bomb at the park's rifle range about 10:40 p.m.

"It was probably something left over from the military base, something somebody packed off from the military base," Wolfinger said.

Cook said it had to be a pretty powerful ordnance because the explosion hurt his ears, and he lives a mile from the rifle range.

"For them to detonate something over there and have it shake our house, it had to be something very large, especially as loud as it was, too," he said.

Cook, who spent three years with the Marines in Vietnam as a radio operator, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I had a rough night," he said.