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Georgia Diary
December 9, 2001
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As I was saying before, the Crusher has got a special detector which adjusts for finding larger mines and ordnances. For example, anti-personnel mines can go through the Crusher but not an anti-tank one. On finding an anti-tank mine the Crusher gives off an impulse and the belt which is spreading soil all over it stops working automatically. We destroy that mine by means of an explosion in a special pit near to the Crusher. Anti-personnel mines and ordnances are destroyed by the Crusher.
Normally the Crusher crushes mines into small pieces before it activates an explosion. On Tuesday we had a mine explosion inside the Crusher. According to the rules we immediately stopped the Crusher, opened the cap and inspected it. During our inspection we did not find any scratches inside. Though we had been told this would happen we wanted to see for ourselves. After that I gathered mine fragments from the clean soil and added them to my collection where I keep lots of fragments from exploded ordnance, mines, grenades, cartridges etc.
In the future I hope to pass my collection on to a school museum. The deminers from my team were so carried away by this idea that they began bringing lots of things from other minefields. I stopped them from doing this as my collection will only be from the soil which has gone through the Crusher.
It was raining on Thursday morning and I decided to stop all work to carry out a service on the Crusher. During the service, deminer Dzkuya Khirbey damaged his toe. It became swollen and I had to send him to the hospital to make sure he was OK. Fortunately there was no fracture but I had to give him some days off.
Khirbey is a very good and experienced deminer but it is very difficult for him to get used to the technique of the Crusher. He has had a few bumps. While the Crusher operator is absent Khirbey can replace him. He can also replace the driver operator as he was already trained by me and is ready for that too. He is doing his job very well but he cannot understand that the Crusher is much heavier than a 2kg detector.
Ali Makhmatkhanov,
Crusher Field Officer
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