New Year’s Eve bomb a dud on Santa Cruz County beach

PAJARO DUNES — The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad kicked into gear over the weekend after a potentially life-threatening rusty lump of metal washed ashore.

Leading up to the New Year’s Eve day discovery, the Pajaro Dunes, as with much of the Santa Cruz County coast, were pounded with high surf and rains in the past week. Short-term evacuation warnings for the area were issued Thursday morning and again on Friday night.

The area was put on high alert and the Sheriff’s Office squad was called out to the beach around 2:20 p.m., department spokesperson Ashley Keehn said.

Bomb team technicians, however, were able to determine that the munition was inert or inactive after obtaining radiology pictures of the item, Keehn said. Afterward, Travis Air Force Base personnel retrieved the device.

“It is believed to be a practice bomb from the 1960’s,” Keehn wrote in an email to the Sentinel. “Travis AFB (Air Force Base) was called out due to the size of the ordnance and its degraded state. They removed it for future destruction.”