Posts Tagged ‘Understanding Blast’

Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Drew has seen any number of soldiers blown up by IEDs (improvised explosive devices). He was one of roughly 200 Canadians embedded with an Afghan brigade of 3,000 in Kandahar province for seven months in 2008, a time when “there were a lot of bad guys and not a lot of us.” IEDs were the Taliban’s weapon of choice. Fighters used them to blow up soldiers on foot patrol. They used them to blow up vehicles. They planted them in roads, in fields, along paths and in stone walls.

In 2008, Master Corporal Mike Trauner, deployed with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment (3 RCR), was on foot patrol in the Zhari District west of Kandahar, Afghanistan, when a remotely controlled IED (improvised explosive device) was detonated under his feet. The blast blew off his legs and propelled him in a high arc six metres through the air. In 2010, on a road in the Panjwai District, a LAV III (light armoured vehicle) drove over a buried IED, setting off an explosion. The blast sent the 16,950-kilogram vehicle as much as a metre in the air and blew a hole in the bottom of the vehicle, breaking the bones in M.Cpl. Owen Kolasky’s feet and injuring his spine. In earlier wars, both likely would have died; today both soldiers hope to continue their Canadian Forces careers following rehabilitation.