Duck hunter finds pipe bomb
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KICKING HORSE — An apparent pipe bomb found Saturday afternoon by a duck hunter at Kicking Horse Reservoir was removed without incident, Lake County Emergency Management coordinator Steve Stanley said.
The hunter came across a suspicious-looking piece of PVC pipe at about 1 p.m. Saturday near the east end of the dam, where an irrigation canal flows into the reservoir. Tribal Law and Order officer T.J. Haynes described the item as a foot-long piece of 1-inch PVC pipe with a wire coming out of one end and a cap on the other.
“It was taped to a rock,” Stanley said. “It was in the middle of nowhere; it wasn’t near anything (it could damage).”
Tribal Law and Order, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and Lake County Office of Emergency Management all responded to the call, with the Missoula County Sheriff’s bomb squad on standby for a trip up to Lake County. But Stanley was able to recover the suspect pipe by about 2:45 p.m. without the bomb squad’s assistance.
“We’ll just go ahead and have it destroyed,” Stanley said of the bomb.
He said his office gets similar calls once or twice a year, and they’re usually “sort of a non-event,” although he said this type of bomb could cause substantial damage “if it was in the right place, and if it worked.”
Stanley had no idea what type of explosives might be in the pipe, or why someone would place it at the reservoir.
“I assume somebody was doing some fishing,” he joked.
