Stumbling Onto Hand Grenade The Latest Surprise For Real Estate Pair As Hazards Increase For Those Selling Foreclosed Homes

In Clarke County, Georgia, the Athens Banner Herald reports:

• Foreclosure specialists Mike Seger and Jackie Quig never know what they'll find when they check on a house that a bank plans to put on the market. They've come across dynamite, a pipe bomb and marijuana grow houses, but Thursday was the first time they'd stumbled onto a hand grenade. They found the explosive about 11:30 a.m. while inspecting a foreclosed home [...] in Northern Clarke County.

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• The men called 911, and Athens-Clarke police and firefighters raced to the house, along with the bomb squad. [...] Technicians with the University of Georgia police Bomb Disposal Unit sent in a robot, which took the grenade from the house and placed it in a pit that officers dug in the back yard. Officers then used an explosive counter-charge to blow up the grenade. UGA police Chief Jimmy Williamson didn't know if the grenade was real, but the bomb experts who examined it found no evidence that it was fake.

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• A year and a half ago [Seger and Quig] were inspecting a home in Gwinnett County when they found a stick of dynamite that was so old and unstable, officials said it could have gone off at any time, Seger said. Quig was going through the attic of a foreclosed home in Monroe last month when he saw a section of PVC pipe, capped on both ends. "I saw that it had a fuse, so I knew it was a pipe bomb," he said. "When we reported it, everyone came - the FBI, Homeland Security, the GBI - it was wild."

• The men have inspected six homes during the past year, three in Jackson County, where they found the trappings of abandoned marijuana grow houses. "They'd run heavy PVC pipes under the ground and into the house for irrigation," Seger said. "They seemed to have been very elaborate operations."

• The foreclosure specialists know they now work in a more dangerous environment. "We not nearly as confident going into a home as we used to be," Seger said. "You can't walk into a place blindly anymore."

For the story, see Inspection of foreclosed house turns up grenade (Realty specialists note job dangers). DeputyEvictionTheta