WNEM – by Andrew Keller, Nick Lulli
FLINT, MI (WNEM) – It was a peaceful afternoon, and then residents said it seemingly turned hostile.
“I was standing there, and all of a sudden, boom!” Jean Glenn said.
“I mean it was loud, it blew up the whole sky or whatever, it was like four or five big bangs,” Annette Humphrey said.
Explosions you’d expect in a war zone echoed through Flint. People’s homes shook and those inside were caught off-guard. It all went down Tuesday at the shuttered Lowell Junior High on the city’s east side.
The blasts are just an Army exercise.
“There’s older people, it probably gave them a heart attack or something,” Glenn said.
Flint’s spokesman Jason Lorenz said the city has been in talks with the Army for six months now about using parts of the city. This is part of a joint exercise being carried out across the United States.
“It’s an exercise to help their personnel do training with urban environments,” Lorenz said.
That training includes using aircraft and simulated ammunition. It will continue for the next 10 days.
“I think they should have gave us a warning to let us know there was an Army thing going on, I really do,” Humphrey said.
Just after 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, the city sent out a release informing the public about the exercises. People say the explosions went off around 2 Tuesday afternoon, but why were residents given such short notice?
“Obviously, I can’t speak for the Army on that, but we try to give people a heads up when we can, we can’t go into too much detail, we don’t want people just coming to these things and sightseeing,” Lorenz said.
But Wednesday the city apologized for the timing of the notification to residents.
Lorenz said for the safety of residents and the military, they’re trying to keep things under wraps. But those nearby say the house-rattling explosions were an unwanted surprise.
“Give us a message around here, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do,'” Glenn said.
Officials do say they will release more information following the exercises, but specifics will be kept secret so tactics aren’t passed to our enemies.
The U.S. Army is paying for the overtime incurred by the Flint Police Department.
US urban areas are unlike urban areas in Europe, Asia, Mid-East, basically all over the world. The only urban areas like the US are Canada, Mexico and South American countries. Due to older infrastructure in most of the rest of the world, only the western hemisphere consistently has wide asphalt and concrete roads in urban areas. Also the city planning in the western hemisphere is unlike most of the rest of the world due to the age of the cities and the commonly accepted planning methods at the time of their construction. For example a lot of US cities center their government and capital buildings in the center of the city with waste and sanitation on the east/ north-east of the city where housing is generally for people of lower economic means. The do-wells don’t want to live near the stink holes. Washington DC, Indianapolis and other US cities have roads aligned in a radial fashion from the center with connecting roads almost like a spider web. This was a newer concept in the early age of this nation. With all of that said…Who do they think they are fooling by saying that they are training for urban combat in foreign nations? Training in US cities for overseas missions would be detrimental as US cities do not reflect foreign cities.
“The U.S. Army is paying for the overtime incurred by the Flint Police Department.”
No they’re not. Taxpaying Americans are.
Were the Tropics having a home game? It could have been the MegaBowl.
“There’s older people, it probably gave them a heart attack or something,” Glenn said.”
Probably why it wasn’t announced.
“Officials do say they will release more information following the exercises, but specifics will be kept secret so tactics aren’t passed to our enemies.”
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Lame-@ss excuse, considering you’re WORKING for our enemies.
“The blasts are just an Army exercise.”
Oh it was just a simple Army exercise. Nothing major. I mean it was only a big boom. Purely normal. It happens everyday. I mean who trains on a military base these days anyways, right? (sarcasm)
Unfrigginbelievable……