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What was feared to be another major World War II bomb scare in Quarry Bay ended in relief on Thursday evening, after police bomb disposal experts determined that a highly suspicious object unearthed by construction workers was actually just a large stone.
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The false alarm occurred just before 5pm at a construction site on Pan Hoi Street near King's Road—the former site of the "Swiss House" tenement building.
Workers who uncovered a dense, cylindrical object measuring approximately 1.5 meters in length and 50 centimeters in diameter immediately feared the worst and alerted the authorities.
Given the site’s history, the police and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) bureau took no chances and treated the situation with the utmost gravity.
Experts set up a safety perimeter, deployed a Fire Services mobile command unit, and used high-pressure water hoses to carefully wash down and inspect the object.
To the relief of emergency responders and local workers, thorough examinations confirmed that the object possessed no explosives and was simply a massive piece of rock.
Police subsequently cleared the scene and arranged for workers to hoist the stone away using a construction crane.
Despite the happy ending, the emergency response triggered significant traffic congestion during the peak evening rush hour.
To ensure public safety during the inspection, authorities had shut down the slow lane of King's Road heading towards Chai Wan near Pan Hoi Street, as well as the entire stretch of Pan Hoi Street between King's Road and Westlands Road.
The emergency response team's high-alert approach was heavily influenced by a major incident at the exact same location on September 19 last year.
During that excavation, workers had unearthed a genuine, highly volatile 1,000-pound United States military AN-M65 aerial bomb.
That device contained 500 pounds of active TNT explosives, matching the model found at the Shatin to Central Link rail project in 2018.
The previous discovery had triggered a massive logistical operation, requiring the emergency evacuation of approximately 6,000 residents from 18 surrounding residential buildings before bomb disposal experts successfully defused the weapon in a marathon overnight operation.
(Updated at 7.44pm)
