Civil War-era cannonballs have been detonated in South Carolina after Hurricane Matthew uncovered the old military ordnance in Folly Beach.
A local resident came across the cannonballs while walking on the beach on Sunday morning, Chief Andrew Gilreath, Director of Public Safety, told CNN.
“You can see the fuse holes in the balls,” he said.
Erosion caused by the storm unearthed the ordnance in a non-residential area, Gilreath said, and Charleston County and Air Force explosives teams were called to the scene.
The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office said that the US Air Force Explosive Team detonated a number of the ordnance where they were found. A small number were to be taken to a navy base for destruction, the sheriff’s office said on Twitter.
Deadly storm
Matthew, the deadly storm that has wreaked havoc from the Caribbean to the Carolinas, has moved away from the East Coast but the storm will continue to take a toll on the southeastern United States.
Forecasters expect Matthew to die out in the Atlantic Ocean within the next 48 hours, meaning it won’t have a chance to loop back and hit land again as some had predicted.
The region, which has seen at least 17 deaths across four states and power to over 2 million homes knocked out, will likely continue to feel the storm’s devastating impact.
In North Carolina, rising waters have damaged hundreds of buildings, forced thousands into emergency shelters, and left nearly 600,000 customers without electricity headed into Monday.
Officials are now preparing for rivers to top their banks, believing heavy rains — aided by wind-driven storm surges of up to six feet — could lead to flooding on a level unseen since Hurricane Floyd hit in 1999.