By Brendan Rees
When 83-year-old Doreen Storti decided to hand in some of her late husband’s old explosives to Cranbourne Police Station, little did she expect “all hell to break loose.”
Mrs Storti had been going through her garden shed, when she found a couple of boxes of detonators and 18 sticks of gelignite that her late husband had used in the mining industry, as a registered powder monkey.
Not knowing what to do with it, Mrs Storti said she thought “the best thing to do was to” was to hand it in to a police station.
“It was all safe because it was all packed in sawdust so that it wouldn’t sweat. It was perfectly safe. We weren’t banging it or crashing it,” Mrs Storti said.
But when she walked into Cranbourne Police station on Wednesday 27 September at 11am with the help of her son-in-law and daughter to dispose of the old explosives, Mrs Storti said an evacuation was called.
“What happened was the police station was chock-a-block full of people and we couldn’t get any service,” she said.
“We went outside the police station and my son-in law rang the Cranbourne police station but they wouldn’t answer the phone so it got diverted to triple-zero and that’s how it all went haywire because it got diverted to the Federal Police and Bomb Squad.
She said it “didn’t twig at all” that she may have been perceived to be a terrorist, adding “We’re just country bumpkins.”
“I’m an 83 year-old grandmother. I’m hardly a terrorist. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. We thought we were doing the right thing. We didn’t know what else to do with it and all hell broke loose.“
“Out came the blue tapes and the police closed the station for about three or four hours. And I thought oh goodness, there’s no need for all this.
“They just thought ‘Holy mackerel we’re all going to blow up.’ It was really quite funny. They saw the funny side of it in the end.”
“We didn’t know what to do with this stuff. We had to obviously get rid of it I had it in my house for 40 years so I knew it was completely safe.”
“If it was unsafe it would’ve blown up my house. When it sweats it becomes a bit dangerous. I never touched it. It was in that spot and the kids knew not to touch it. We never had a problem with it.“
Mrs Storti said her late husband Dick Storti, worked in the Wonthaggi coal mines and had an explosives licence.
Mr Storti was employed at Glen Forbes where he assisted in road widening.
“Dick used to go and blow the rocks out. Everybody was out. The roads were closed while they were blowing. The grader would come and push the rocks over the side.
“He was working in 18 inches of coal and he used to lay on his shoulder and shovel the coal. That was good money. That’s what he was after.”
Mr Storti also worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
After the Cranbourne Police ordeal, Mrs Storti said the matter was “very funny” and her late husband “would’ve had a laugh from heaven.”
“But they (police) were fantastic – once they knew that we weren’t terrorists, we weren’t there to hurt them. We just wanted to get rid of this stuff.”
Mrs Storti said police inspected her property and “were quite happy there was no more there.”
“Not that we had anything to hide,“ she said. “It was all under lock and key, so they were impressed by that. They wanted to come in and inspect where I had it stacked.”
Police advised members of the public who wished to hand in such items to contact them before attempting to move any old or unused explosives.
